{"id":110538,"date":"2025-10-29T15:31:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/110538\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T15:31:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:31:11","slug":"the-creator-of-hell-house-llc-on-why-lineage-is-his-last-film-in-the-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/110538\/","title":{"rendered":"The Creator of ‘Hell House LLC’ on Why ‘Lineage’ Is His Last Film in the Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hell House LLC: Lineage marks the end of an era, as Stephen Cognetti<\/a>, who created the horror series back in 2015, has officially declared he\u2019s done making Hell House LLC movies<\/a>. However, there may be a new era on the horizon; Lineage is the first Hell House LLC narrative film after four found-footage<\/a> entries, and Cognetti is hopeful the films will continue\u2026 just without him behind the camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am done with Hell House, but that was never to be misconstrued as the story being finished,\u201d Cognetti clarified in a recent interview with io9. \u201cAnd I think that was where a lot of confusion came in when people saw the ending of Lineage [during its theatrical run]. I think they were expecting something more wrapped up. For people that are going to see it on Shudder for the first time, just know that not everything is going to be wrapped up into a nice bow at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued. \u201cI\u2019ve had so much fun making [the Hell House LLC movies]. It is my intention to stop making them, not for the story to end.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s not turning his back on his series completely. \u201cIf it ever gets picked up in another way by someone else or in another medium of some kind, I would think I would like to have some involvement,\u201d Cognetti said. \u201cBecause I actually know what comes next. I have outlines of what comes next, story-wise; what comes before and what comes after is written down. I\u2019m just not going to make it. So I\u2019d like to know that at least the framework that I had in my head was still being adhered to.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he doesn\u2019t have a successor in mind right now. \u201cNo, there\u2019s no plan. There\u2019s no plans at all for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"LineageHell House LLC: Lineage \u00a9 Shudder <\/p>\n

Cognetti knows where the story goes after Lineage. But he also told us the endgame he\u2019s had in mind for Hell House LLC has changed shape over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think all stories evolve. Things change over drafts. Even the script for Hell House, the original, changed over time. Who died, who lived\u2014that changed over the rewriting process. So nothing ever is just written in stone,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I love about the rewriting process. You write the script, you rewrite, you make changes, and what you finally end up shooting is not what you originally conceived of in the first draft of the script. That\u2019s a natural part of the process. As to where the actual end to the story goes, it\u2019s not written out in script form, but it\u2019s just more of a general idea structure of what the sixth, and I guess the final, segment of the trilogy would be\u2014Lineage was originally written as the middle movie of a trilogy, and obviously the ending kind of plays that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he reiterated, he\u2019s ready to move on. \u201cGoing into Lineage I realized, \u2018I really cannot make the sixth one so this is going to be it, unfortunately.\u2019 And I say that with sadness, because I\u2019ve had so much fun making these movies. So it\u2019s not like, \u2018Oh, I can\u2019t wait to be done with it.\u2019 No, these movies mean a lot to me. So I\u2019m sad to leave it, but I just can\u2019t do it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lineage is a film that\u2019s very dependent on having seen all the other Hell House LLC movies. It picks up story threads and builds out characters and lore mentioned in earlier entries and explores them in a fairly involved way. That\u2019s because Cognetti was making it for a certain audience, as he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cOriginally this was never supposed to be a theatrical release film, so I think that\u2019s cast a wider net of horror fans than it was truly meant to,\u201d Cognetti said. \u201cIt was supposed to [just] be streaming on Shudder, which is where all the other films live. So I thought it\u2019d be a better fit for such a story-entrenched film to be a streaming movie on Shudder, where you can watch all of them together and go back and forth if you need to watch some before or watch some after. But for a theatrical release, you don\u2019t get that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think if I had to do it all again, going into production, knowing it was going to be a theatrical release, I probably would have changed a lot of things, especially in the second act,\u201d he said. \u201cBut not too much. I mean, there\u2019s only so much you can do anyways, but I would definitely not have made it so plot entrenched if I knew it was going to be a wider release.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LineageHell House LLC: Lineage \u00a9 Shudder <\/p>\n

Cognetti says that he never imagined Hell House LLC would take on the life that it has, becoming what\u2019s now a five-film franchise with a devoted fan base.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only wanted to make one good film, the best film I could make, and hopefully it would gain an audience. That was the only desire at the time,\u201d he said. \u201cBut what I do when I write in something like Hell House, I like to leave breadcrumbs for storylines just to show that there is more story out there \u2026 I think that just came naturally in the writing process, not [in a way that was] like, \u2018Oh, I should make this film have a sequel intention or a sequel ability.\u2019 It was more just that\u2019s how the story kind of wrote itself naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n

He does have one regret in leaving Hell House LLC behind. It\u2019s tied into the fact that there is more story to be unearthed in the fictional town of Abaddon, New York, where the movies take place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to have dug into [the folklore of Abaddon] a lot more. The whole on-the-ground Abaddon is something that I\u2019ve always wanted to explore,\u201d he said, pointing to story settings with lots of in-universe history, including the Rockland County Fair, the Abaddon Hotel, and the Carmichael Manor. \u201cBut when we\u2019re in the found footage world, we just see the hotel and that\u2019s it, or the Carmichael Manor and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lineage has a broader focus, something its narrative structure allowed and encouraged. \u201cSo going in this route, we can explore a little bit more of the town. My only regret is that we couldn\u2019t do it more,\u201d Cognetti said. \u201cI think there are just so many fun stories out there in the world\u2014especially if you\u2019re doing it narratively, you\u2019re not restricted to telling the story that\u2019s contained to, \u2018Why is there a camera and why is someone filming this?\u2019 You could tell much more of the Abaddon story. So yeah, that was a lot of fun to be able to do. We only did it a little bit; I would have loved to have it done more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LineageYou know this guy\u2019s gonna pop up in Hell House LLC: Lineage. \u00a9 Shudder <\/p>\n

Check back later this week for io9\u2019s review of Hell House LLC: Lineage, which streams on Shudder starting October 30.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hell House LLC: Lineage marks the end of an era, as Stephen Cognetti, who created the horror series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,67139,67140,61,60,270,67141],"class_list":{"0":"post-110538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hell-house-llc","10":"tag-hell-house-llc-lineage","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-stephen-cognetti"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}