The Evil Dead saga has taken a lot of twists and turns throughout the years, and what began in a small cabin in the woods is now a full-blown franchise that will see at least two more films at some point in the near future. Though it remains to be seen how those movies will fit into the overall timeline of the series, original star Bruce Campbell says they’re not that complicated to understand, at least, not on the level of Star Wars, which director George Lucas shot out of order – something he gladly took a tongue-in-cheek jab at in a recent interview with ScreenRant.
Touching on the future of the Evil Dead franchise, Campbell explained that the sequels will always feature a few Easter eggs that tie back into the original trilogy, thus connecting them all together in some form or fashion, even if they don’t necessarily continue the story from one film to the next. For him, it’s not that complex, really, and something that doesn’t even come close to George Lucas’s epic space saga, which began in 1977 with Episode IV before finally getting to Episode I – The Phantom Menace 22 years later.
“We’re always going to make them [the sequels] pay some respects to the franchise. It’s not even a franchise. This thing came out of really nowhere. It’s been percolating for years in different directions. They just got to pay some homage. And there’s always going to be a threat. So,
it’s not George Lucas intricate
, you know, Jabba the Hutt and Chapter 9, 10, 11, 12, told in reverse. It’s not that, but there will be some of that. There has to be.”
Evil Dead Is Officially ‘Out of the Cabin’
Though 1992’s Army of Darkness saw Campbell’s character of Ash Williams transported back to 1300 AD to battle a whole host of baddies (including an evil version of himself), the series returned to its humble roots in 2013 with Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead, which once more focused on a small ensemble gathered together at a cabin in the woods struggling to survive against the forces unleashed from the Naturom Demonto.
In 2015, the franchise took another noticeably tonal shift with the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead, uprooting it yet again from its forest setting to deliver something that felt much broader in scope. The trend continued in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, which was set in an apartment complex in Los Angeles; about the furthest you can get from the wilds of Tennessee. According to Campbell, we can expect more of that in the future because, as he puts it, Evil Dead is now officially “out of the cabin,” meaning it’s time for fans to welcome some fresh faces and settings to the saga instead of holding on to nostalgia.
“Hey, we’re out of the cabin. We’re well out of the cabin now. We’re well beyond Ash. We’re two movies beyond Ash. So, the old guy, no one cares about him anymore. So, it’s fine. It works good.”
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Bruce Campbell Reveals Why ‘Nasty’ Evil Dead Franchise Had to Change
Had it not been for the tonal shift between movies, Evil Dead might not have stood the test of time.
Plot details remain under wraps for the upcoming sequels, which will be helmed by Sébastien Vaniček and Francis Galluppi respectively. Both directors will look to put their own spin on Raimi’s lore, and with the two filmmakers having very differing tastes, it will be interesting to see which sort of surroundings they’ll choose for their films. Will it be a suburban neighborhood in the 1970s? Maybe they’ll go overseas to explore how foreigners handle Deadites. Heck, we might even get a space adventure set 1000 years from now. Who knows? Either way, with both Raimi and Campbell still involved in the franchise, fans are sure to have a blast with the splatstick series that – no matter its setting – has never failed to stray far from what we’ve all come to expect from the beloved cult favorites.
- Release Date
- September 10, 1981
- Cast
- Bruce Campbell , Ellen Sandweiss , Richard DeManincor , Betsy Baker , Theresa Tilly , Philip A. Gillis