When Sam Raimi first let the cat out of the bag that he was plotting out a fourth Evil Dead movie with Bruce Campbell back in the role of Ash, fans immediately wondered how the canon of the gory horror franchise would be affected by Fede Alvarez’s reboot, which arrives in theaters on Friday. Well, as Campbell and Alvarez continue to promote the reboot, ideas for how the stories could merge continue to develop.
At WonderCon over the weekend, the cast and crew for the new Evil Dead took the stage and entertained audiences with gruesome footage from the upcoming film. A Q-and-A followed, during which Alvarez stated that he “wants to make a sequel (to his reboot), have Sam Raimi make Army of Darkness 2, and then have the worlds collide in a film that would bring it together.” Alvarez already has gone on record as saying he has ideas for a possible sequel, and that they’d be totally different from the “kids in a cabin” formula that’s milked so well by the Evil Dead movies.
Might we be looking at an Ash-Mia team up somewhere down the line? When asked by a WonderCon audience member if there’s a chance we’ll see Ash in future Evil Dead movies, Campbell wisely answers, “Yes. Yes, there’s a chance.”
Obviously, we’re living in a world where major franchises need to be mashed together to create bigger, “better” forms of entertainment. The Avengers didn’t just change the superhero genre … it altered the entire industry. Now fan-fiction writers who imagine team ups of classic heroes (like Ash) with new protagonists (like Jane Levy’s Mia) are seeing these dreams come to life on screen. We’d be a long way off from a team up, if it were to happen after both an Evil Dead sequel and an Army of Darkness sequel. But the wheels are turning, and they just might reunite two blood-thirsty warriors on screen one day.
