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?