This is going to be a big year for horror fans as we are going to get our first new Evil Dead movie in nearly a decade with Evil Dead Rise. We haven’t seen anything from the film just yet, and much remains mysterious. Sam Raimi, director of the original horror classic who returns to produce this latest installment, has offered some assuring words that make us believe it may well be worth the wait.
The filmmaker is currently making the press rounds promoting Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which hits theaters this weekend. Speaking with the folks at Slash Film, Raimi offered a little bit of an update on Evil Dead Rise, and it sounds like he’s quite happy with the movie as it currently exists.
“I’ve seen a rough cut, a medium-fine cut, and a fine cut. There’s probably a few changes that [director] Lee Cronin is making that I haven’t seen, but it’s great. It’s terrifying and it’s going to knock people’s socks off.”
Lee Cronin, as Raimi points out, is directing Evil Dead Rise. The filmmaker is currently neck-deep in post-production and is working alongside Bruce Campbell, who played Ash Williams in the films as well as Ash vs. Evil Dead, though he won’t be reprising the role in this movie, which will move the action to a big city for the first time. Speaking further, Raimi spoke about Cronin and how the movie came together in the first place.
“He had always liked Evil Dead, and I loved The Hole in the Ground. And that picture was brought to the executives that I work with and they showed it to me and I thought, this is really a great director. And we met and we talked and he said he really liked The Evil Dead. And I said, then why don’t you make the new one? I think you’re just the kind of guy I’d like to do it. He said, ‘great. Let’s go.’ We put together a script and we gave notes and he made some changes and then we raised money for the movie and he went down to New Zealand to shoot it with my partner, Rob Tapert. Now Bruce Campbell is working with him in post-production sound.”
The cast for this latest installment includes Alyssa Sutherland (Vikings), Lily Sullivan (Picnic at Hanging Rock), Gabrielle Echols (Reminiscence), Morgan Davies (The End) and Nell Fisher (Splendid Isolation). It will mark the first movie in the franchise since 2013’s Evil Dead, though this one is going directly to streaming and will not (so far as we know) be getting a theatrical release. With any luck, we should be getting a trailer and some release info sooner rather than later.
Evil Dead Rise does not yet have a release date but is expected to arrive this year on HBO Max.
