Movies
Universal Gets in the Steve Niles Business With ‘Criminal Macabre’
Universal Pictures has acquired Criminal Macabre, the Dark Horse Entertainment comicbook miniseries created by Steve Niles (30 Days of Night). Kyle Ward has been set to write the script. The story centers around a supernatural detective who doubles as hitman, taking out all the vampires, ghosts and other unsavory monsters who live among humans, hiding in the shadows by day and emerging at night. Ward was recently hired to script a sequel to “Hitman” for Fox and producers Adrian Askarieh and Chuck Gordon. He also scripted the Lionsgate vidgame adaptation “Kane and Lynch” and “Fiasco Heights,” a Universal project that has Michael Bay attached to produce.
We already know that this year’s Evil Dead Burn is directly connected to Evil Dead Rise, but will the brand new movie have any connection to the franchise’s more distant past?
According to Evil Dead Burn star Hunter Doohan, there are indeed connections between the new movie and director Sam Raimi’s original trilogy of Evil Dead tales!
Doohan explains in a fresh new chat with Out Magazine that he’s playing a character named Joseph in Evil Dead Burn, who is “researching the lore in the story.”
“Joseph is working on a book about his grandfather’s research,” Doohan reveals in his chat with Out Magazine. “His grandfather knew Professor Knowby.”
Doohan continues, “I loved how this script not only ties back a little bit to Evil Dead Rise — but this movie connects the lore through the whole franchise, which I found really exciting.”
Professor Raymond Knowby is at the very center of the original Evil Dead trilogy, heard on the infamous tape recorder in the original classic and later featured in Raimi’s Evil Dead II.
Professor Knowby found the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the ruins of Castle Kandar, bringing the book and its Deadite curse to the cabin in the woods that Ash and friends end up at.
Needless to say, Knowby is one of the most important characters in the mythology of the Evil Dead saga. And it sounds like Evil Dead Burn is bringing it all full circle this Summer.
Sébastien Vaniček’s Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters July 10, 2026.
After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws in their secluded family home. As one by one they are transformed into Deadites—turning the gathering into a family reunion from hell—she comes to discover that the vows she took in life… live on even in death.
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