Evil Dead Rise ($116 Million Worldwide Box Office)

Bruce Campbell Says ‘Evil Dead Rise’ Will Put a Heroine Up Against Urban Deadites

To again recap, the next movie in the Evil Dead franchise is currently titled Evil Dead Rise, it’s being directed by Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground), it won’t feature Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams, and it’s not going to be set at a cabin in the woods. Rumored but unconfirmed at this time is that the movie will be set in some kind of high-rise/skyscraper.

“I’m confident I’m going to do something that’s both familiar and refreshing. I’m gonna deliver a rollercoaster of horror,” Lee Cronin recently told BD’s The Boo Crew Podcast. “That’s what the goal is here. Relentless. Not stopping to explain too much. It needs to be extremely visceral, highly entertaining, properly scary. To push boundaries, that’s important as well.”

Chatting with AL.com this week, producer Bruce Campbell spilled a few more beans, revealing that Evil Dead Rise – like Evil Dead 2013 before it – will feature a female heroine.

“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,” Campbell explains. “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.”

   He continues, “We’re going to have a heroine, a woman in charge, and she’s going to try and save her family.”

Campbell also generally updated on the project, noting: “We’re honing-in, circling the building now trying to lock in a partner. We have a couple of bidders and we’re trying to just find the correct suitor and we have a script written and a director picked. And it’s got a very good modern tale. It’s a modern-day urban Evil Dead. And we’re hoping to do that next year.”

Female heroines, beginning with Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead and Jane Levy’s Mia, have been at the center of the franchise for several years now, with the Starz series “Ash vs. Evil Dead” introducing us to Kelly Maxwell (Dana DeLorenzo) and Brandy Barr (Arielle Carver-O’Neill). Brandy, it turned out, was actually Ash’s daughter, becoming a Deadite-slayer in her own right.

UltimateMarvel wrote:High-rise/skyscraper doesn't sound as scary as cabin in the woods. Evil Dead was scary as fuck, gave me nightmares for a day or two.

WyldeMan wrote:A skyscraper sounds like a potential body count in the hundreds as opposed to a cabin which never offers up more than 3 or 4 victims per movie. I support this decision however I would really like them to bring back one or two of the already established women of the Evil Dead universe.

Are you talking the campy '81 original Evil Dead or the incredibly violent 2013 Fede Alvarez straight horror remake with Jane Levy?

In the fifth Evil Dead film, a road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie, who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped L.A apartment. The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building. It gives rise to flesh-possessing demons, and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable.

Evil Dead Rise hits theaters on April 21, 2023.

UltimateMarvel wrote:FUCK ME! This just brought up some of the scenes from the 2013 movie, it still haunts me. There is real evil here, it's not just a movie. I see anything like that through the peephole, I'm killing myself and then burning my body.

WyldeMan wrote:Alyssa Sutherland started out as a model in Australia then played a Norse Viking Queen and now she's a Deadite. Interesting career progression.

WyldeMan wrote:How you gonna burn your own body afterwards? Or do you got a guy?

UltimateMarvel wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:Alyssa Sutherland started out as a model in Australia then played a Norse Viking Queen and now she's a Deadite. Interesting career progression.

Never seen her before. She looks very tall too which makes her even more scary.

No doubt Alyssa's a long, lean beauty.

UltimateMarvel wrote:She's pretty, she has to be at least 6ft tall. Once again, Australia keeps producing beautiful women.