It’s been close to twenty years since Sam Raimi’s made an Evil Dead movie, and horror fans have wanted a new Dead installment for a long time now.
Raimi’s shoestring horror masterpiece launched a wonderful franchise, and Bruce Campbell’s still in fighting shape. The original Evil Dead also made a successful theatrical run again thanks to Grindhouse Releasing.
Every so often there’s talk and speculation about a possible Evil Dead 4, or a remake / reboot, but nothing official comes to light. Now with Raimi about to make Oz: Great and Powerful, he’s passing the torch to a newcomer, Fede Alvarez, who directed a short film, Panic Attack!
According to reports on Bloody Disgusting and Cinema Blend, the Dead remake is casting in Detroit, so the film is going back to its low budget roots where Raimi and his gang of filmmakers first came together, and plotted making the ultimate horror movie.
Cinema Blend is of the opinion that Raimi going back to the franchise is pointless, and he pretty much remade Evil Dead with Evil Dead 2 anyways.
Also just reported is that Diablo Cody will be doing a re-write on the new Evil Dead script, a development that isn’t sitting well with horror fans already.
Personally, I think it would be fun to see what Sam could do with Evil Dead so many years after the fact, and now that he’s had a number of big effects blockbusters under his belt. I certainly believe it would be fun to see what Sam could come up with from his current vantage point, but also on the other hand, now that he’s done big blockbuster flicks, what always gave Evil Dead its charm was it was done with a dollar and a dream, and was very low tech.
Another cool thing about Evil Dead, as Bruce Campbell explained to the L.A. Times, “We had complete control over our very first movie and your very first movie is the one you’re not supposed to have control over. You make a movie and it makes $100 million and the filmmakers never get anything back. Guess what? We got something back because we own the movie, we own the negative.”
Having raised the money themselves from investors gave the Evil Dead gang tremendous freedom to make the movie their way.
When the Times asked Campbell about the prospect of doing another Dead, he said, “I’ll do another one when we get money from doctors and lawyers to do our own version. Then I’m interested again. I’m not interested in making a $60 million studio film with a bunch of 24 year olds telling me what to do.”
