Last July, Sam Raimi said we could expect “some action” on a new Evil Dead movie within six months. Well, it’s been a touch longer than that—look, the world’s in absolute goddamned turmoil right now so we get it—but today it’s been announced that a new entry in the franchise is on the way.
Bruce Campbell dropped the news in a new interview with Empire, revealing that Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin will write and direct a film they’re calling Evil Dead Now. Cronin was, per Campbell, “handpicked” by Raimi, and the plan is for him to “get that sucker out as soon as practical.”
Raimi said in July that there were three paths forward for an Evil Dead movie, including continuations of either the Ash Vs. Evil Dead series or Fede Álvarez’s 2013 reboot. It seems, however, that they’ve settled on neither of them, likely due to Campbell having retired the iconic Ash and Álvarez already having a full plate.
So what will Cronin’s movie look like? Campbell doesn’t reveal much, aside from that it will feature a female lead.
“From this point forward, they kind of have to stand on their own. Which is fine. And liberating,” Campbell told Empire. “You could have different heroes, different heroines in this case. This one’s gonna be a little more dynamic.”
He continued, “We just want to keep the series current. And the mantra, really, is that our heroes and heroines are just regular people. That’s what we’re going to continue.”
We mostly liked Cronin’s The Hole In The Ground when we caught it last year—our review calls it a “fresh angle on the possessed-kid subgenre” that, alas, suffers from leaning too hard into its metaphor. The good news? Evil Dead doesn’t need metaphors! It just needs blood. Lots and lots and lots of blood.