Movies
[OMFG, WTF, SAY WHAT?] ‘EVIL DEAD 4’ In The Works — Sam Raimi Suing To Stop It?!?!
I literally just had my mind blown, courtesy of this article at THR, and it more than warrants my ridiculously obnoxious headline. According to the website, a fight has broken out over who has rights to do a new sequel of the 1981 horror classic, The Evil Dead.
Apparently, Award Pictures says it plans to make a fourth film in the series. Yes, the long-promised Evil Dead 4. Renaissance Pictures, formed in 1979 by producer/director Sam Raimi, producer Robert Tapert, and actor/producer Bruce Campbell for the purpose of making the first film, is suing Award Pictures for the sequel rights, which is interesting considering they’ve abandoned any talk of Evil Dead 4 and started production on the remake, Evil Dead, April 11 with FilmDistrict and Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures.
Anyways, the interesting bit that comes out of the article is that this potential coming film is allegedly interfering with Raimi’s own plan to make his own sequel for Sony Pictures and FilmDistrict. But Award Pictures isn’t laying down. The company is using Raimi’s own comment in a 2000 book that he would never do a sequel as proof that the Evil Dead trademark was abandoned. The company now says it is the primary trademark holder of the film title.
Skipping ahead a bit, Renaissance says Award Pictures’ planned film entitled Evil Dead 4: Consequences, is intended to cause confusion to consumers, and also says that the key plot elements and character names “would inevitably infringe Renaissance’s copyright rights in The Evil Dead.” Alleging trademark infringement, false advertising, injury to business reputation, Renaissance is asking for an injunction against further infringement and further monetary damages.
You can read the lengthy article by clicking here, but let’s all have a little chat about this right here, right now. While it’s sweet to hear that Award Pictures would be moving on the inevitable Evil Dead 4, there’d be zero input by Raimi and Co. Therefore, it would probably be some bullsh*t direct-to-VOD sequel that 100% wouldn’t star Bruce Campbell. Do we even want that? I’d rather sit and hope that Raimi comes around and one day delivers on his promise than have some company half-ass a bullsh*t sequel in the vein of Asylum garbage. Good luck Raimi!
What say you?
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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