Although Bruce Campbell has retired Ash from the Evil Dead franchise, he is not done with the movies completely. Neither a remake nor a sequel to the Campbell films, Evil Dead Rise occupied its own universe with new characters and monsters, and was technically a sequel to the 2013 re-imaging of Raimi’s 1981 original.
Both films were well-received by critics, but most importantly the fans. But they both have a decade between them which producers, Robert Tapert, Sam Raimi and Campbell would like to change.
At the beginning of December, Campbell spoke with Collider about his involvement behind the scenes and even though he has retired the character of Ash, he still loves the franchise and believes the movies should be more regular.
He told journalist Robert Taylor, “We’re going to do them probably more like every two to three years now, rather than every 10 years. But, hey, we’ve seen with Star Wars — you don’t want to wear people out. Keep them guessing! We never wore out our welcome with Evil Dead because we never choked them.”
Director Fede Alvarez took over the reins from Raimi with his bloody Evil Dead reboot in 2013, and Lee Cronin continued that dominion with Rise. Assuming Alvarez is too busy to helm another movie, that task would fall to Cronin, especially since that last film was so triumphant.
But Campbell voices his concern about Cronin returning because he might be in high demand to work on other projects that don’t include Deadites or the Necronomicon.
“We were very happy with what Lee Cronin did,” Campbell says. “He did a great job, to the point where he’s going to be hard to employ again because everybody wants to use him now. So we’ll see if we get him back or not! It’s made the most money of any Evil Dead movie so far at $140 million. So, yeah, you bet your bottom dollar we’re going to do a few more.”
So far nothing has been announced about another Evil Dead movie. That might be because of the recent writer’s and actor’s strikes. But if Campbell is serious about his planned scheduling of the films, expect to hear some development news very soon.
