‘Evil Dead’ Film Series Returns with Part 4; Filming Starts This Year

Bruce Campbell aka Ash Williams reveals that the fourth part in the Evil Dead series, Evil Dead Rise, will start shooting this year.

Two years after Bruce Campbell hung his boots up in the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead, he has confirmed that the movie franchise is definitely going to live on.

Speaking with Empire, Campbell disclosed the next Evil Dead movie is in development, with Lee Cronin (who directed A24’s The Hole in the Ground horror flick) taking over directorial duties.

“We’re just getting off the phone with Lee Cronin, who is writing and directing the next Evil Dead. It’s called Evil Dead Now. Sam handpicked Lee—he did a cool movie called The Hole in the Ground. We’re going to get that s***er out as soon as practical.”

Bruce Campbell

However, this does not mean that Campbell is coming out of retirement from playing our fair Ashley. Nonetheless, he’s staying on the franchise as a producer.

“From this point forward, they have to stand on their own. Which is fine. And liberating. You could have different heroes, different heroines in this case. This one gonna be a little more dynamic… We 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.”

Bruce Campbell

With an ambiguous title like Evil Dead Now, it’s still uncertain whether the film is a full-fledged reboot or simply set in one of the earlier films’ multiple timelines. While theories like continuity and canon have always been somewhat conceptual ideas to the Evil Dead movies, there is the chiefly acknowledged universe of the original three movies.

The original starred three different versions of Ash watching his girlfriend Linda turn into a ghoul and range in the manner from darkly humorous horror to pure slapstick with a splash of time travel.

However, Campbell’s statements should reduce the fears Evil Dead fans felt about the film’s production potentially getting postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While Ash Williams’s absence will dishearten some, a new, fresh take on the decades-old franchise is surely an intriguing one.

About Evil Dead

Evil Dead is an American supernatural horror film franchise created by Sam Raimi consisting of four feature films and a television series. The series revolves around the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, an ancient Sumerian text which wreaks havoc upon a group of cabin inhabitants in a wooded area in Tennessee in America.

The protagonist, Ashley Joanna “Ash” Williams (Bruce Campbell) is the only character to appear in every installment of the original trilogy, with the notable exception of his main love interest Linda, who appears in Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness during only the prologues.