Dallas Actor Goes to Hell

Dallas actor cast to raise hell as Pinhead in horror movie franchise

A Dallas actor will play Pinhead in the next installment in the Hellraiser movie franchise.Photo courtesy of New World Pictures
Local actor Paul Taylor, aka the new Pinhead, has been a staple onstage for years.Photo courtesy of Paul T. Taylor
Taylor and Caroline Dubberly in Mr. Burns, A Post-electric Play at Stage West.Photo courtesy of Stage West
Taylor as KoKo in The Hot Mikado at Theatre Three.Photo courtesy of Theatre Three

One local actor is about to give us all nightmares. Paul T. Taylor, who has appeared on stages all over Dallas-Fort Worth, along with a handful of movies and TV shows, has been cast as Pinhead in the upcoming movie Hellraiser: Judgment.

The 10th installment in the gory film franchise, created by horror master Clive Barker, was announced suddenly in mid-February. The news came this past weekend via Bloody Disgusting that Taylor was taking over the lead role.

Taylor is a classically trained actor who has racked up accolades in everything from Mr. Burns: A Post-electric Play at Fort Worth's Stage West to The Hot Mikado at Dallas' Theatre Three to Miracle on 34th Street at Dallas Children's Theater.

Now he's donning the movie monster's acupuncture-gone-wrong look after the previous Pinhead from 2011's Hellraiser: Revelations, Stephan Smith Collins, declined to reprise his role. Doug Bradley played the role in the first eight films.

Director Gary Tunnicliffe previously teased the casting of a new Pinhead with a post identifying the actor as “a classically trained stage and film actor who brings a great physical presence and more than a hint of Peter Cushing and Ralph Fiennes.”

Anyone who saw Taylor as the titular and terrifying Mr. Burns at Stage West will have no problem imagining him as the villain.

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Dallas Morning News Groupon

An investment firm is circling back to try and acquire the Dallas Morning News: MNG Enterprises, Inc., an affiliate of Alden Global Capital, a New York investment firm that is into buying up newspapers, has increased its offer to purchase DallasNews Corporation to $18.50 per share, which they note is higher than a competing offer that the DMN has already accepted.

On July 10, parent company DallasNews Corporation announced that The Dallas Morning News would be acquired by New York-based Hearst, joining a portfolio of 28 daily and 50 weekly newspapers, for $15 per share in cash.

But on July 22, MNG Enterprises, Inc. made a competing offer. Alden owns more than 200 newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the New York Daily News, and the Denver Post, and has subsequently shrunk newsrooms with cutbacks and buyouts.

The Dallas Morning News has already clarified that they wish to go with Hearst, but Alden is persisting.

A statement from MNG says that they've made proposals to address the concerns of Dallas Morning News majority stockholder Robert Decherd, which have been ignored; and cit their track record for "sustaining quality journalism" as well as their recent acquisition of six newspapers in Northern California from Sonoma Media Investments.

That acquisition followed a similar scenario: Sonoma Media Investments was expected to sell its portfolio — consisting of the Press Democrat, the Sonoma Index Tribune, the Petaluma Argus Courier, the Sonoma County Gazette, La Prensa Sonoma, the North Bay Business Journal, and Sonoma Magazine — to Hearst. But at the last minute, Alden came in with a higher offer.

According to the Sonoma Sun, after the Alden purchase was announced, all newsroom staff were offered buyouts — a standard Alden strategy, usually followed by staff layoffs. According to an NPR report by David Folkenflik, a former reporter at the Baltimore Sun, which is now owned by Alden, a NewsGuild union study covering a six-year period found that Alden cut staff at Guild-represented newspapers by an average of 75 percent.

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