Last year saw the resurrection of Evil Dead as a reboot that was grislier and more graphic than Sam Raimi's original trilogy. Despite vocal outrage from the franchise's fans early on in the reboot's development, this new Evil Dead was a big hit, pulling in $97 million worldwide. So you'd think a sequel would be a no-brainer. But the reboot's writer-director Fede Alvarez isn't committing to a timeline for his Evil Dead 2.
Shock Till You Drop spoke with Fede Alvarez as he did press rounds for his next project, a television series based on From Dusk Till Dawn. Alvarez insists that he, Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert are all in communication about the future of Evil Dead's franchise. But there's no rush to get a second Evil Dead 2 in theaters. He explains:
"Sam, Bruce and Rob Tapert and I are good friends and we talk to one another often and we're always coming up with new ideas and projects. Sam is teasing Army of Darkness 2, which he is working on the script with his brother, but at the same time Evil Dead 2 is something we definitely want to do at some point. ... It's always in the background and always in our heads. And every time I talk with Sam, we're bouncing around ideas to find what would be the perfect sequel."
In theory, Army of Darkness 2 would essentially mean Evil Dead 4, a Raimi project that genre fans have been pleading for since Army of Darkness, the third film in his trilogy, debuted back in 1992. But it has been Fede Alvarez who got our hopes up for Evil Dead 4/Army of Darkness 2 while on the press tour for his Evil Dead. Alvarez has been eager to have the worlds of their respective Evil Dead's collide.
Back at WonderCon 2013, Alvarez had teased the possibility of a movie that would unify the threads of Ash (Bruce Campbell) and Mia (Jane Levy), the heroes of each branch of the horror franchise. According to his initial outline, Army of Darkness 2 would follow the Evil Dead reboot, and then from there Evil Dead 2--which really should be called something, anything else--would bring together these two ass-kicking characters. While this is an intriguing idea, it means we all have to wait on Sam Raimi making Army of Darkness 2 before we'll see Evil Dead 2. And clearly Raimi is in no rush.
In the meantime, Alvarez is developing the Playstation 3/Xbox 360 video game Dante's Inferno into a movie for Universal.
