Sam Raimi has had an impressive and eclectic career that has seen him contribute to a great number of genres – including crime thrillers, superhero blockbusters, a baseball drama, a western, and more – but his greatest impact has arguably been on the horror genre. He broke into the film industry with the creation of Evil Dead, and he's returned to the scary stuff throughout his career. Sadly, he hasn't directed a straight horror movie since 2009's Drag Me To Hell, but he's now ready to end that streak with his next project.
According to Deadline, Sam Raimi knows what movie he wants to direct as his follow-up to 2021's Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, and it's a feature titled Send Help. The film being made based on an original screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (the writers of Freddy vs. Jason and the 2009 remake of Friday The 13th), and the story reportedly is set on an island with two principal characters. The trade describes the upcoming horror movie as a cross between Rob Reiner's adaptation of Stephen King's Misery and Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away starring Tom Hanks.
In recent years, Sam Raimi has made contributions to the horror genre, but it's been via the small screen or as a producer. He directed the pilot of the terrific series Ash vs. Evil Dead, and also helmed the first three-episode arc of the Quibi series 50 States Of Fright. As a producer, he's not only brought as the last two Evil Dead movies (2013's Evil Dead and 2023's Evil Dead Rise), but also films like Don't Breathe, Crawl, and Umma.
Send Help is a project that is set up at 20th Century Studios, but it apparently doesn't have a green light to move forward just yet. As such, there are no dates being targeted for either the start of production or release – but the trade report does note that the project is targeting theaters and not streaming.
There are a whole lot of questions about this project that don't presently have answers just yet. For example: if the story is about two characters who ended up stranded alone on an island together, how will Sam Raimi find a way to include a Bruce Campbell cameo? (Assuming, of course, that he's not going to play one of the leads – which I would absolutely love to see.) Hopefully it won't be too long before generated excitement for Raimi's return to big screen horror gets Send Help the green light and we can start learning more about the film.
As far as other Sam Raimi horror projects are concerned, he has two other films in the genre he has produced that are now on the way, including the woman vs. serial killer thriller Don't Move (which has been picked up by Netflix) and the upcoming movie Locked directed by David Yarovesky (Brightburn) and starring Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins.
