The Evil Dead universe is about to collide and then we’ll collectively explode.
It’s been reported multiple times that Starz’s “Ash vs Evil Dead” has bits and pieces of what was once to be the long-gestured Evil Dead 4. Hearing that made it appear that a fourth film would no longer be in the cards, which was slightly disappointing considering Ash’s cameo at the end of the Evil Dead remake (Fede Alvarez’s film is actually a sequel, in the same universe, but shhhhhh). Still, it’s hard to complain when we get a full blown Evil Dead television series…
Starz and co. are at the ongoing San Diego Comic-Con hyping up the home video release of Season One, with the follow-up season set to return this coming October. During one of the press panels, executive producer Rob Tapert revealed that Evil Dead 4 is still in the cards!
“Nothing’s off the table,” Tapert said. “We’re thinking about what that could be, and who that would please. Sam [Raimi] talked for many years, teasing the world that we were going to make ‘Evil Dead 4’. And that kind of turned into a TV series. Now Bruce [Campbell] and I are going, ‘Well, there’s a possibility of a movie here.’ So there could be one. Anyways, we’ll see what happens.”
I’m actually happy to know that most of Evil Dead 4 is in the series, which means the team will have to come up with a brand new take in order to continue the adventures of Ashley J. Williams. With that said, “Ash vs Evil Dead” is an obvious continuation of the Evil Dead trilogy, yet doesn’t reference Army of Darkness. Tapert explains why.
“So, ‘Army of Darkness’ is owned by MGM, and we just never had a chance to properly reference it in the first season,” Tapert explained. “I read somebody’s online thing, ‘Oh look, they’re only pulling from these two [‘Evil Dead’] movies.’ This season, we do bring up Ash’s events in ‘Army of Darkness’, and reference it. It was more that there wasn’t a place for it in our storytelling that we needed to talk about that. If he started blabbing to these shop clerks about, ‘Yeah, I went back to the Middle Ages and did all these things,’ [it would just be exposition]. But that is in his memory bank, and he’s going to pull it out at the appropriate time.”
This is all immensely exciting because the Evil Dead universe is on the cusp of exploding. There’s the trilogy, the remake, and the television series, yet none of it connects yet. I cannot wait to see them tie it all together into one massive Deadite bonanza!
