After Halloween, Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (just to name a few), Pumpkinhead is now the latest in a long line of horror movie franchises getting a reboot.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Saw franchise executive producer Peter Block has nabbed the rights to the Pumpkinhead franchise, and he plans on shooting the reboot next year (that’d be 2017). Block is currently on the hunt for a director, and he plans on producing the big-screen movie.

The original Pumpkinhead was released almost 30 years ago, back in 1988, and starred Lance Henriksen (Aliens) as a man who summons a terrifying creature (aka Pumpkinhead) to exact bloody, deadly vengeance on the teens responsible for his son’s death. It was the directing debut of the late, legendary makeup FX artist Stan Winston. Over the years, the movie gained a cult status and has spawned not one but three sequels (one direct-to-video and the other two films on Syfy). Here’s what Block said about the horror film:

“Pumpkinhead is one of my favorite horror films of the late ’80s, early ’90s. Stan Winston sits on that Mount Rushmore of iconic filmmakers because of his creature designs, and that was his first directing effort. The creature’s great but the emotional story is wonderful as well. I got the rights to Pumpkinhead, and hooked up with a great young writer called Nate Atkins, and we developed our script, which is really solid.”

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Block then goes on to explain that the reboot will be similar to the original film but will not be a “point-by-point” remake. Which is kind of a good thing.

“There is a similarity of theme and a similarity of story. There’s a lot of Easter eggs for people who know the original — iconic shots and iconic lines that we’re going to use. But we’ve enhanced the setting, and we’ve expanded the characters somewhat, to give it a different kind of experience. We’re just about to start going out looking for a director for it. [We need] somebody who really understands why the first one is terrific, the emotional beats of ‘Is the revenge you seek worse than whatever befell you in the first place?’ But it’s also somebody that wants to embrace what I think audiences really want these days — a really scary, fun thrill-ride. You get a lot of people who want to be in this genre because they see the commercial opportunities. I’m looking for a director who has a love for the genre and knows how to get those beats for the audience.”

Block confirmed the new movie is also titled Pumpkinhead and that they'll try to use as many practical effects as they can -- just like the first film (and most of the creature features of the time).

“I am a big proponent of practical effects. That was the great thing about the original. A lot of the films I still respond to most today, it’s because of the practical effects. We think that it’s going to be a nice slow reveal, lots of scares and lots of action in the beginning, and a great creature in the end, which everybody should be able to look at and say, ‘Oh, that’s Pumpkinhead!’ It’s not like you’re all of a sudden going to find that it’s some amorphous, nebulous, CGI wispy thing. You’re going to know it came from the Pumpkinhead family lineage.”

Are you excited to see that a new Pumpkinhead movie is heading to the big screen, or do you think this is one reboot too many? Do you believe Saw producer Peter Block is the right man for the job?

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(via EW)