Sam Raimi delighted fans of his Evil Dead series on Friday when he announced that he and his brother, Ivan, would be working on a script for Evil Dead IV this summer. Today, Bleeding Cool caught up with the Oz The Great and Powerful director and learned that, while Raimi’s hopes for the sequel are high, the film itself is far from a sure thing.
“I would like to work on the script over the summer,” he explains. “That much is true. But the reason to come back and do it again is only that theyre making me, those fans… I am thinking about it, but a crowd goes ‘Come on Sam, do it!’ so I said ‘Okay, I guess I was talking to my brother about it.’ But I feel like I was pushed into saying that, a little bit.”
The Evil Dead series began in 1981 with the self-proclaimed “Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror” and continued in 1987’s semi-sequel/semi-remake Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, finally concluding (for the time being) with 1992’s Army of Darkness. Although the franchise has continued through video games and comic books, hope for a big screen sequel seemed dashed when Raimi announced that he would be producing Fede Alvarez’s upcoming remake of the first film, set for release on April 5.
The brother Raimi mentions is older brother, Ivan Raimi, with whom Sam co-wrote Army of Darkness and Drag Me to Hell (among other projects).
“I was saying to Ivan ‘Why do they stay on this thing? Why do they keep at it?'” Raimi continues, “and he said ‘They want you to make a movie. Youre a filmmaker and your fans are asking you to make the movie. What are you, an idiot? Make the movie!’ I guess theres something I dont see. It makes sense when Ivan says it I didnt have a tremendous amount of passion until right now to bring to it.”
Check back for updates as they become available and catch Oz The Great and Powerful in theaters March 8.
(Photo Credit: WENN.com)
