Bruce Campbell Confirms Evil Dead Rise Aims to Shoot This Year
Evil Dead fans were given a promising update recently, as longtime star and producer Bruce [...]
Evil Dead fans were given a promising update recently, as longtime star and producer Bruce Campbell claimed that the next film, Evil Dead Rise, aimed to start shooting in New Zealand later this year. Understandably, the coronavirus pandemic has caused a number of complications for the movie industry, with even this update likely only being tentative, but given that New Zealand was able to contain the pandemic more quickly than other parts of the world, allowing various major productions to resume filming, this update bodes well for the future of the franchise. Lee Cronin is on board to direct the film.
"Planning to shoot the next Evil Dead movie in New Zealand later this year," Campbell shared with Knox News. "[It's] set in a modern-day urban setting. It's out of the woods."
Campbell starred in the first three Evil Dead films, the first of which was first unveiled to audiences in 1981, as well as three seasons of Starz's Ash vs. Evil Dead. In 2013, Fede Alvarez delivered audiences a reimagining of the concept, which scrapped Campbell's character of Ash and instead focused on a female lead character (played by Jane Levy). The actor previously confirmed that the new film will once again focus on a female hero.
"Rebooting can be very confusing and frustrating and not always successful. Reboot, sequel, remake; we have all these crazy terms," Campbell shared with AL.com last October. "What we're doing now is we're saying, 'Look, this is another Evil Dead movie and that book gets around, a lot of people run into it and it's another story.' The main key with Evil Dead is they're just regular people who are battling what seems to be a very unstoppable evil, and so that's where the horror comes from. It's not someone who's skilled. They're not fighting a soldier. They're not fighting a scientist. They're not fighting anybody more than your average neighbor. This one is going to be a similar thing. We're going to have a heroine, a woman in charge, and she's going to try and save her family."
The new film is also expected to take the franchise in some exciting new directions, focusing less on a remote wilderness refuge and unleashing Deadites and the Necronomicon's powers in a more urban setting.
Stay tuned for details on Evil Dead Rise.
Are you looking forward to the new film? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!