After nearly a year since filmmaker Sam Raimi confirmed that he’s indeed working on the new installment to Evil Dead, franchise star and producer Bruce Campbell has finally shared the first details about the next installment to the iconic film series, revealing that it will be titled as Evil Dead Now. Speaking with Empire, Campbell has further revealed that Raimi has already handpicked the next helmer of the iconic film series in the form of The Hole In The Ground director Lee Cronin, who has also signed on to write the fifth installment.
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“We’re just getting off the phone with Lee Cronin, who is writing and directing the next Evil Dead,”he said. “It’s called Evil Dead Now. Sam handpicked Lee – he did a cool movie called The Hole In The Ground. We’re going to get that sucker out as soon as practical.”
According to Campbell, like Fede Alvarez’s 2013 reboot, this new installment will also stand on its own and won’t have any ties to the previous films. “From this point forward, they kind of have to stand on their own. Which is fine. And liberating,” says Campbell. “You could have different heroes, different heroines in this case. This one’s gonna be a little more dynamic. We just want to keep the series current. And the mantra, really, is that our heroes and heroines are just regular people. That’s what we’re going to continue.”
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The Evil Dead franchise began with 1981’s The Evil Dead and was followed by 1987’s Evil Dead II and 1993’s Army of Darkness which were all written and directed by Sam Raimi and centered on Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams. The original trilogy had amassed a massive cult following that spawn into video games, stage musicals and a comedy horror series titled Ash vs. Evil Dead which ran on-air from 2015-2018. In 2013, the fourth installment to film franchise was introduced with Fede Alvarez’s 2013 soft reboot of Raimi’s 1981 film which now revolve around a female protagonist.
Lee Cronin is an Irish filmmaker who made his feature-length directorial debut last year with the supernatural horror film The Hole in the Ground. He also recently collaborated with Raimi as he directed an episode of Quibi’s horror anthology series 50 States of Fright.
