Evil Dead Rise (read our review right HERE) is in theatres this weekend – and Evil Dead franchise rights holders Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Rob Tapert are already looking forward to producing more entries in the series. In fact, during an interview with AV Club, Campbell revealed that they’re hoping to boost this franchise in a major way, making a new sequel every two or three years!
Campbell said, “It’s all about the books now. It has nothing to do with (franchise hero Ash) or any particular character. In Army of Darkness, we first saw three books. So we know there are three out there, and none of them are any good. It’s about: where does that darn book wind up, who gets it, and what happens? But the universe is the same. It’s about innocent people with no special skills having to fight for their very lives. … I think the stories will progress a little more now. We’re going to try and do them more like every two or three years rather than every 10 years. It’s also the first time Sam is working with his brother Ivan to create an overall Bible that will give future writers and directors an idea of where this thing should go next to potentially tie in some of these stories. So I think it’s going to get a little more tied in as the years go by. But because it’s all about the books. It could be a book in the past, a book in the future. It’s yet to be determined.“
Campbell doesn’t have an acting role in Evil Dead Rise, as he has formally retired from playing franchise hero Ash on screen, but he did produce the movie alongside Raimi and Tapert… and he is still open to providing the voice of Ash for video games and possibly an Evil Dead animated series. Confirming an animated series in the works, Campbell said, “My voice has not aged as much as I have, but it’s in development, and there’s nothing else to say. I can’t really talk about what it would encompass, but they are noodling ideas, and we’re having meetings and all that boring crap.” Asked if he has an ending envisioned for Ash, he answered, “Well, he’s foretold in an ancient book. So I think he would have something more of a mystical ending. And it’s animation, so you can do anything you want. He could be any age you want. So we have a lot of latitude there. I don’t know, we haven’t given it that much thought.“
As for which of his legacy characters he would still like to play on screen: he would like to revisit Brisco County as an older cowboy, and still wants to work on Burn Notice projects as his character Sam Axe “because there’s still a bunch of scumbags in the world that need to be f*cked with“.
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