Filming Begins On New Entry In The ‘Evil Dead’ Series Titled ‘Evil Dead Burn’
Alright, you primitive screwheads, listen up! Production has started on the sixth installment of the much beloved Evil Dead franchise through Warner Bros. It is scheduled to be released exactly one year from now and director/co-writer, Sébastien Vaniček, is so eager to spill his guts about the upcoming Evil Dead Burn, that he went to his Instagram to share an image from the first day on set in New Zealand. It’s clear that the up-and-coming French filmmaker wants the legions of Deadites to know the cameras are rolling, and they can only hope that plenty of heads will follow.
In the executive producer chairs are Evil Dead creator, Sam Raimi, the groovy Bruce “Ash Williams” Campbell, and their friend Rob Tapert, who hasn’t left his producer chair since Raimi’s deliberately overlooked sophomore effort, Crimewave. There’s still no word yet on the plot for Evil Dead Burn, or if there will be any special cameos, but it’s set to star Souheila Yacoub (Dune: Part Two), Hunter Doohan (Wednesday), Luciane Buchanan (The Night Agent), and Tandi Wright (Pearl).
Vaniček has shown that he’s no stranger to grossing out an audience or completely unnerving anyone who has a single shred of arachnophobia, with his 2023 debut, Vermines (a.k.a. Infested). Talking to Variety last May, the director confided that he was seduced by the project because the Evil Dead movies are “like a creative playground, a bold laboratory for filmmakers eager to explore something raw, brutal, and deeply transgressive.”
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But he also doesn’t plan on doing just another retread. “My goal was to craft a powerful, singular – almost personal – story that could stand on its own,” he said in the interview. “While still resonating deeply within the rich, complex world that Sam has built.”
Horror fans were introduced to this dark world in the celebrated 1981 unrated indie classic, The Evil Dead. The low-budget gorefest was a sleeper hit that gained traction after horror scribe Stephen King viewed it at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, and it became a staple at midnight drive-in double features during a time when those wonderful events were a lot more prevalent. With this film, Raimi gave moviegoers a fear of cabins in the middle of the woods, and an extremely deep distrust of tree vines.
Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn followed in 1987, giving the genre one of its greatest sequels, along with a new American Horror Chad in Bruce Campbell. However, Army of Darkness (1992) brought the series deep into the comedy and adventure territories. Campbell carried the movie across the finish line with enough quotable one-liners to fill every bloody pit within Castle Kandar, and it will forever be a top selection of drunken dorm rooms around the world.
Fede Álvarez brought the series back to more serious soil with his 2013 remake, and then splashed it with 70,000 gallons of fake blood, but it didn’t leave as much of a mark as the previous films. Things changed when Raimi and Campbell reunited for the series Ash vs. Evil Dead, which premiered Halloween night in 2015 on STARZ. It gave fans three amazing seasons that combined elements from all three movies before flatlining in 2018. Raimi, Campbell, and Tapert took their current positions for the 2023 standalone entry, Evil Dead Rise, by director Lee Cronin, and that appears to have plotted the course for the franchise going forward.
Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead is available to rent on Prime, along with Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, but Ash vs. Evil Dead is free on Pluto. The graphic novel, Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness, is also worth reading.
