At the peak of the Hellraiser remake controversy, we just had the chance to speak with the co-director of the hotly anticipated film, Julien Maury! Maury and Alexandre Bustillo have been tasked with the quite difficult but friggin?-awesome opportunity to play with puzzles, Pinhead and the whole Cenobite crew. Although the film has not yet begun filming, and will not be seen until sometime in 2009, find out what Maury had to say about working on the remake of Clive Barker?s classic with friend and co-director Bustillo?as well as writer Marcus Dunstan (Feast, Saw IV) and the return of Pinhead!!

By Shade Rupe

Your early short films show a very technical imagination at work. When did you begin making short films?

I went to a cinema school in Parism ESRA (Ecole Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle), and right after that I began to direct shorts. But it was only with my own money and with my friends for the cast, shooting during weekends. So when one of my shorts was selected in festivals among fuller, produced movies, I was really proud. When I started winning awards competing with much more organized films, started looking for an agent.

How did you and Alexandre meet each other? When did you decide you would work together as co-directors?

By the simplest way, through a mutual friend. Alex was a journalist with the French version of Fangoria called Mad Movies and I was a big fan of his articles. Each time I read his work I shared his opinions about movies. So one day, I asked our mutual friend who was also a journalist if it was possible to meet Alex. So we had a cup of coffe and we shared the same ideas of cinema, the same taste and the same enjoyment of telling stories.

Co-directing was a way for us to share the stress and the huge amount of work. It?s really precious to have someone on the set to rely on. If one of us is tired, the other one is there. It?s more effective for us, but exhausting for the technical crew!

Your move to Inside is an incredible jump from your comedic shorts. It?s a very intense chamber horror film, and one of the most violent horror films ever made. How did you both make this decision to move into horror?

It wasn?t a decision, it was natural! Since around the age of 8 years old, I began to watch horror movies with one of my older brothers. It was an epiphany! My first shock film was JAWS! The perfect movie, the best ever made of all time! As I was found of horror, it was really natural to do a horror movie as a first film. My shorts were always genre movies but each time I included comedy in them because I was convinced that when you make shorts without money, you have to be funny..

Inside is such an extreme film. How difficult was it to raise the funds for the film?

We were an exception in the French system! Our greatest luck was to find our producers. They believed in the project so they were persuasive with the investors. Inside is a very low budget film and this kind of movie is easily sold so no one loses money. But with the French system, TV channels provides 50% to finish movie budgets but only if they can broadcast them on primetime. For a horror movie, you won?t be able to get more than 2 millions euros.

In France when you try to raise funds it's really hard without the help of TV channels. They are the main investors for cinema in France. But they only give money for movies they can show on prime-time for the whole family... So they don't want to hear about horror movies!

For a horror movie, two million euros is usually the max whole budget you can get with all the investors from TV channels and other investors. CANAL + can give around 750,000 euros max and the rest is provided by outside investors. That's why there are a few horror movies in France nowadays, because of CANAL + which have created a support fund for horror movies. These are the only guys are the only one to support genre and to have balls!

Beatrice Dalle is a well-known actress for over 20 years now. How did you decide you would use her for Inside? It's really nice to see a modern horror film where the actors are not teenagers.

We are very big fan of her work, especially in Trouble Every Day and for the character of The Woman we needed an actress with huge charisma, capable of express a lot of different emotions without saying a word and Béatrice is the only one of her generation like that. But the reality is that she is the only actress crazy enough to accept cutting open a pregnant woman?s belly!

It was really important for us not to have two teenagers fighting for a baby. We were interested in the character of a middle-aged woman because the background is more deep and we could also build her character around the visceral need to have a child and a despair raised by the proximity of menopause.

Inside is definitely one of the most violent horror films ever. An amazing collection of murderous devices and bloodletting occur. Was this a conscious notion to make a bloody movie, or merely part of the storyline? Were you ever attempting to reach a 'horror fan' audience?

Since the beginning with Alex, we wanted to make a movie we could have paid for in a theatre. So as we are big fans of horror movies, it was obvious for us that we would have gallons of fake blood on the stage. This movie wasn?t made in any purpose, reaching a community, to shock, to be more famous? It?s just a good story that we tried to tell the best way we could.

How were you approached to develop the Hellraiser remake?

The Weinstein brothers bought Inside at the Berlin film festival for the English-speaking countries release. So they offered us a chance to work together. They talked to us about Hellraiser and their wish to re-birth the franchise.

Do you feel Hellraiser needs to be remade? Have you had any meetings with Clive Barker?

Definitely, but it won?t be a real remake, more like a second reading. And this version will not erase the original, it?s like an homage, we have too much respect for Clive Barker to try to tell the exact same story, we don?t want to ruin his universe. Yes we?ve met him in LA and we had him on the phone to discuss ideas, he is a living god, a legend?we love him!

Will this be a completely new telling of the Hellraiser mythos, or will be see familiar Cenobites and puzzle boxes and mute girls?

We don?t know yet but in our version, it?s a brand-new story, respectful of Barker?s mythology so there is of course Pinhead, the box and new Cenobites.

Will we see any of the famous characters from the Hellraiser series, i.e. Pinhead?

For the moment, Pinhead will be the only famous one returning!

Any other film projects in development beyond Hellraiser?

Yes, there is a french project called Neiges (Snow) that we are developing. Alex and I have written the script together. It?s a sort of an adventure fantastic movie with horrific elements?

Are you friendly with any other other extreme filmmakers from France? Eric Valette, Gaspar Noé, Alexandre Aja, etc.?

Yes we know Eric Valette a little, Fabrice DuWelz and Alexandre Aja and we are close friends with Xavier Gens. But we don?t know Gaspar Noé. It?s very difficult to make horror movies in France so we are trying to help each other. We would love to create a sort of New Hollywood, but in France!