Movies
Bruce Campbell Teases That ‘Evil Dead Rise’ Is a “Very Adult Evil Dead Movie”
The Evil Dead franchise is back this year not only with Evil Dead: The Game, now available, but also with new movie Evil Dead Rise, set to debut exclusively on HBO Max here in 2022.
We still don’t yet have a release date for Evil Dead Rise, but it’s interesting to note that the very first footage from the movie was just shown off during a Warner Bros. Discovery upfront presentation this morning. That footage is not expected to make its way online, to be clear, but Eric Goldman over on Twitter has reported back on what he saw at the event.
Goldman tweets, “Evil Dead Rise footage in HBO Max movie montage! A possessed girl looking all Deadite-y standing up on a kitchen counter screaming at a dude.”
On a related note, we just got in the book The Art of Evil Dead: The Game from the Collector’s Edition set, and within is a new interview from Bruce Campbell with some Evil Dead Rise chatter. He mostly talks about the tone of the movie, teasing a “very adult” new film.
“I’m very excited about it. It’s going to be really cool and very, very intense. It’s dark, a very adult Evil Dead movie,” Campbell teases. “I wouldn’t call it a yuck fest – it’s pretty tough, pretty hard-hitting stuff. And that’s the variation that you have within the Evil Dead franchise and within horror itself. It’s all about the filmmaker.”
Campbell continues, “Sam Raimi handpicks these guys, and so Lee Cronin is the guy who directed it, and he’s a little bit of a serious dude. So you let him do his thing.”
It sounds like we can expect Evil Dead Rise to be more tonally similar to Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead movie than Sam Raimi’s sequels, less “splatstick” humor and more dark and grim.
Stay tuned for more as we learn it.
Here’s the official plot synopsis for Evil Dead Rise…
“In the fifth Evil Dead film, a road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie, who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped L.A apartment. The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons, and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable.”
Gabrielle Echols (Reminiscence), Morgan Davies (The End) and Nell Fisher (Splendid Isolation) will star in the new movie alongside Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan.
Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert are producing Evil Dead Rise. According to Campbell, the three have been “very involved” in the project every step of the way.
Evil Dead Rise footage in HBO Max movie montage! A possessed girl looking all Deadite-y standing up on a kitchen counter screaming at a dude.
— Eric Goldman (@TheEricGoldman) May 18, 2022
Movies
‘Abigail’ on Track for a Better Opening Weekend Than Universal’s Previous Two Vampire Attempts
In the wake of Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man back in 2020, Universal has been struggling to achieve further box office success with their Universal Monsters brand. Even in the early days of the pandemic, Invisible Man scared up $144 million at the worldwide box office, while last year’s Universal Monsters: Dracula movies The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield didn’t even approach that number when you COMBINE their individual box office hauls.
The horror-comedy Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with just $26 million. The period piece Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21 million.
But Universal is trying again with their ballerina vampire movie Abigail this weekend, the latest bloodbath directed by the filmmakers known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream).
Unlike Demeter and Renfield, the early reviews for Abigail are incredibly strong, with our own Meagan Navarro calling the film “savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore,” ultimately “offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.” Read her full review here.
That early buzz – coupled with some excellent trailers – should drive Abigail to moderate box office success, the film already scaring up $1 million in Thursday previews last night. Variety notes that Abigail is currently on track to enjoy a $12 million – $15 million opening weekend, which would smash Renfield ($8 million) and Demeter’s ($6 million) opening weekends.
Working to Abigail‘s advantage is the film’s reported $28 million production budget, making it a more affordable box office bet for Universal than the two aforementioned movies.
Stay tuned for more box office reporting in the coming days.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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