After playing Evil Dead franchise hero Ash Williams on screen for around forty years, spanning three feature films and three seasons of the TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, Bruce Campbell formally retired from the role, saying he’s not physically able to handle the action sequences any longer. But he is still willing to voice the character, as evident from Evil Dead: The Game… and a while back, he said would gladly provide Ash’s voice if there were ever to be an Evil Dead animated series. Franchise creator Sam Raimi has let it be known that he wants to continue making Evil Dead projects with Campbell, and he must have heard Campbell’s answer to the animated series question, because Campbell said more than a year and a half ago that they were actively pursuing the idea. Now, during an interview with ComicBook.com, Campbell has confirmed that an Evil Dead animated series is being developed… but it’s a slow process, so we shouldn’t expect to see the show any time soon.
Campbell said, “We’re just developing it. So we are, but these are slow-motion, molasses processes, so it could be years away.”
Hopefully not too many years. Clearly there aren’t many details to share about the project at this time – but many fans are hoping that it would pick right up from the futuristic ending of the Ash vs. Evil Dead TV series. Campbell has previously said it would. “You pick up right where the show left off. You can do the future a lot easier in animation.“
While we wait to see what happens with the Evil Dead animated series, we have at least two more Evil Dead movies to look forward to. Movies that will, like Evil Dead 2013 and Evil Dead Rise, not feature Campbell as Ash. Francis Galluppi is on board to write and direct one of them, and Sébastien Vaniček is working on the other. A couple of months ago, Campbell told EW, “The future is two more damn movies. We’ve got two new fabulous directors that have two new scripts in the shoot, and we think we’ve suckered a studio into coughing up the dough for both, since they seem to still make money. The funny thing is, the Evil Dead movies, the last one made $140 million, and the Evil Dead movies don’t usually make that much money. They’re cheap, so they don’t have to make that much — but now that they’re making real money, it’s kinda hard to look away. And we want to do it — the last one was 10 years ago, Fede [Álvarez’s reboot] was 2013! So we want to get a little more of a pipeline for folks who still follow it, who want to see it. They want to see it in the new incarnation! We’re out of the cabin, Sam [Raimi] doesn’t have to direct, I don’t have to star as Ash. The trick is to take the elements that people like, which is innocent people being tortured by a malicious entity, and it’s people who have no skills to stop it.“
Are you looking forward to the Evil Dead animated series and/or the movies Galluppi and Vaniček are working on? Let us know by leaving a comment below.