The horror genre continues its killer run at the box office with the release of Scream VI this past weekend. However, Scream’s not the only iconic franchise returning in 2023 as Evil Dead will be rising from the grave in the appropriately titled Evil Dead Rise. The film releases this April and is premiering this week at the South By Southwest Film Festival. The marketing for Rise has been slowly scaring moviegoers everywhere. Now, in an exclusive interview with Empire Magazine, original franchise director and Rise producer Sam Raimi has teased that he wants more Evil Dead, and to work with franchise star Bruce Campbell again.
A Possible Future For Evil Dead
Raimi began his Evil Dead conversations by talking about his past ideas for the franchise involving storylines that would continue exploring both Campbell’s Ash and Jane Levy’s Mia from 2013's Evil Dead. “That character, Mia, was great, so I was very interested,” Raimi said. “We had been talking about an Evil Dead IV for the other branch of that universe, and we were worried a little bit about a collision. Ash Vs Evil Dead is what that morphed into.” Raimi would finish off talking about the past by saying, “But I always thought there was room for both. I still think there’s room for all sorts of Evil Dead movies. I don’t think they cancel each other out.”
The conversation would then move to reteaming with Campbell and producer Rob Tapert for a potential new Evil Dead project. All three have been involved with the blood-soaked franchise since the very beginning in 1981. Raimi would go onto say, “I love working with Bruce and Rob. I love it as a producer because they’re really good partners, but I also like being supported by them as the director. So I hope that is on the cards eventually.” What this means for the future of Evil Dead remains to be seen, but Campbell has been retired from the Ash role since the end of Ash Vs Evil Dead in 2018.
Campbell had teased a potential Evil Dead animated project recently, but in a world where Michael Keaton’s returning as Batman, anything is possible, especially when it comes to the crazy Evil Dead universe. Since 2013, Mia has become an equally beloved character in Evil Dead, so there's a chance that Mia and Ash coul finally team up against the Deadites in the near future. If anyone can convince Campbell to return as Ash in a live-action capacity, it would be Raimi as they’ve been friends for decades. Besides the Evil Dead films, Campbell infamously had a cameo in all three of Raimi’s Spider-Man movies and kept the tradition alive in the director’s latest last film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
What's the Plot of Evil Dead Rise?
However, as horror fans, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Evil Dead Rise is the next installment in the franchise and will see the return of the Necronomicon as it terrorizes a young family in a Los Angeles apartment building. While the franchise has bounced around from campy horror scares to horror comedy slapstick, Rise looks to be following in the footsteps of the pure horror of 2013's Evil Dead. Also like the acclaimed film, the story will touch on similar themes of broken families as our main lead sisters, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and Beth (Lily Sullivan), have been estranged for years. The Deadites are only here to make their problems even worse.
While it remains to be seen how this latest installment will tie into the larger universe, Evil Dead Rise will be released exclusively in theaters on April 21, 2023. Raimi and Campbell return as producers while Lee Cronin directed the film. Whether Evil Dead’s future sees Raimi return as a director or Campbell as its star, it sounds like the Deadites aren’t being buried anytime soon. Until then, you can read Raimi’s full interview in the latest issue of Empire Magazine when it hits store shelves on Thursday, March 16. Evil Dead Rise’s trailer can also be viewed down below.