While Starz’ ‘Ash vs Evil Dead‘ is a clear hit that we all love, many fans wish that there had been an ‘Evil Dead 4.’ Director Sam Raimi now shares which ideas he had kicking around while the film was in development. Yes, another cinematic sequel was in the early stages of being created and Raimi is letting us know what he had in mind for it. Obviously, ‘Evil Dead 4’ never got that far, but during the commentary track for the upcoming home release of the first season of ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’, Raimi, Rob Tapert, Ivan Raimi, and Bruce Campbell went off topic on how that film would have been.
According to Raimi, here’s the reason it took so long to develop the film to the point it never happened:
“Ivan and I wrote a lot of different versions of Evil Dead as a feature in the years after Army of Darkness. We’d get 20 pages into one draft and realize it was not good, do another five pages a different direction.”
Some of the ideas included a modern take:
“Bruce is a documentary filmmaker I remember one of them was, capturing his own journey through life. I remember we wrote one version; we started to write one version of Evil Dead 4…”
Brother Ivan chimes in: “Bruce travels cross country to sell his documentary in a car to explain the importance of his story being told.”
Sam continues: “No one thought it was a very important story except him.”
Another idea that popped up had Ash coming back into play right after the events of ‘Army of Darkness’ which actually would follow the 2 versions of Ash depending on which cut of the original film you saw. One in the post-apocalyptic England and another set in present day:
“So we wrote an Evil Dead 4 that followed both realities. We were going to be following two Bruces – one in the future and simultaneously crosscutting to Bruce here in the present. And we realized, we have really lost our mind now and we must stop.”
True fans of the series would have loved this but to be honest, those of us who have seen both endings wouldn’t be as common as we like to think.
Another take had ‘Ash vs. the Machines’ which was more along the lines of a ‘Terminator’ story arc but Raimi said that there “wouldn’t be enough money for the big production we had planned” so it, too, was scrapped.
When the movies ended up as a TV series Campbell was worried that Raimi would be “mortified” by the thought of the change of venue but Raimi’s comeback really sealed the deal:
“I thought it was great, because I realized the audience will only have to take you [Campbell] in little doses.”
While we haven’t had any ‘Army of Darkness’ references in the first season, rights have been worked out so that they can be included in the second. Rave reviews, high ratings, and the majority of fans loving Campbell’s return to playing Ash seems to show that everyone related to the project made the right choice going forward.
Have you been enjoying ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ so far? Would you have preferred that one of the ideas they listed out for ‘Evil Dead 4’ had happened? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Screen Rant
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!
