Evil Dead Director Sam Raimi Hints at a Possible Horror Return

Filmmaker Sam Raimi is delivering audiences what is arguably his biggest film yet with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, though it was his early efforts in low-budget horror that earned him a passionate following, with the director teasing that he might want to follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe film with a return to genre filmmaking. He noted that he wouldn't necessarily want to go back to the no-budget experience of something like The Evil Dead, which came with a number of challenges, but still something more akin to the intimate thrillers he has delivered audiences on multiple occasions.

"I wouldn't want to go back to the budget of the first Evil Dead," Raimi revealed to /Film. "I mean, that was brutal. That was extremely difficult. But I would like to make something the size of The Gift or A Simple Plan, those smaller budget movies that are just about the characters and thrills. An intense little horror movie would be great."

Throughout the '80s and '90s, Raimi's acclaim was growing surely and steadily, though never quite rose to the level of blockbuster status. That all changed in 2002, however, when the director delivered the first Spider-Man film, which was a cinematic game-changer in a number of ways. 

While 2000's X-Men was a success, it was Raimi's Spider-Man that truly proved how effective a Marvel movie could be on the big screen, with DC Comics characters having previously been the only major successes at the box office. Surely the Wall-Crawler was already a fixture of pop culture at the time, but the 2002 film took both the character and Marvel to all-new heights. This led to a barrage of Marvel films being developed, ultimately leading towards the birth of the MCU with Iron Man in 2008.

Another experiment that Raimi helped prove with Spider-Man was that studios didn't have to hire filmmakers who were well-versed in blockbusters to tackle major projects, as it was directing sensibilties that carried more weight than prior experience on large-scale projects. Filmmakers like James Gunn, Taika Waititi, Joe and Anthony Russo, Chloé Zhao, Ryan Coogler, and Jon Watts would all follow in Raimi's footsteps with their jumps to superhero stories after proving their talents in a smaller scale.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is in theaters now.

Would you like to see Raimi make another small-budget thriller? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!