This is the kind of story that needs at least ten exclamation points in the headline, but I understand why my editors would frown upon that. Genre fans everywhere will be hailing to the king now that Bruce Campbell himself has confirmed that a sequel to Sam Raimi’s 1992 comedy horror cult classic Army of Darkness is on the way, and that he’ll definitely be involved. Ash Williams is coming back!
Of course, Campbell’s word is far less official than a studio press release, or even having Raimi deliver the news, but I’m not about to defame such a national treasure by calling him a liar. It's true he's been saying this sort of thing for years now, but at least this time comes after Raimi confirmed he'd be spending the summer writing an Evil Dead 4 screeenplay, after many years of similar promises. Campbell's latest comments may be more convincing if he had been fanning his face with a finished copy of the script while saying them.
Speaking to a crowd of fans at the Wizard World Nashville Comic Con this weekend (via ComicBook.com), Campbell first spoke of the film in a hypothetical manner. “The last one was 22 years ago,” he said. “I just haven’t been racing to do it. Sam Raimi is just a little bit busy making the biggest movies in Hollywood. I used to be busy. Now I’m not. That’s why I’m here.” Campbell’s talent for self-deprecation knows no bounds.
“Ash would have to stop occasionally from chasing some deadite to catch his breath,” he continued. “Maybe we could do that, I guess. That would be exciting. Fight in a walker. That would be all right. Hit them with my cane. Fake them out, have a fake heart attack, distract a zombie. I like it.”
But when one inquisitive crowd member asked if an Army of Darkness sequel was a legitimate prospect, Campbell dropped the jokes and said, “All right, sir, the answer is yes.” And then the pages of the Necronomicon began flipping independently and medieval knights began pissing themselves.
Raimi and Campbell have been teasing a fourth E.D. film almost as far back as Army of Darkness itself, and it became a regular occurrence some years back once Raimi was in the middle of his Spider-Man era. It always seemed like something of a pipe dream before, but the project now has theoretical legs to stand on.
The Evil Dead series gained a lot of new fans this year with the release of Fede Alvarez’s more horrific remake of the first film, and sequel rumors for that flick began almost immediately. This could hypothetically mean that there's a future where two different Evil Dead follow-ups could be coming out within months of one another. And since all three of Raimi’s films in the series were completely different – even though the second film is essentially an absurdity-filled remake of the first – there’s almost no way to tell what kind of a film Army of Darkness 2 could be. Will it take place during the Revolutionary War? Will Ash fight witches in Salem? Will this just be a shot-for-shot remake of Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell with Campbell inserted into the storyline? I would be more than happy to accept any of those options. But somehow I think Raimi will have something even more wonderfully outlandish planned.
It wasn’t long ago when Campbell was talking about how watching Evil Dead movies was more fun than making them. Let’s all thank our lucky stars that he never completely gave up on it. Hold your boomsticks high and relive Army of Darkness with the trailer below and share your opinion in our admittedly subjective poll.
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