Evil Dead Rise expected to film this year according to Bruce Campbell

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell recently did an interview with "Knox News" and everyone's favorite B-movie superstar is revealing details about the next movie in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise. Campbell sadly won't be returning as Ash for the sequel but he is involved as a producer and he did drop the news that the movie is set to begin filming this year.

"Planning to shoot the next Evil Dead movie in New Zealand later this year. [It's] set in a modern-day urban setting. It's out of the woods."

Bruce Campell has been the face of the Evil Dead franchise as Ash beginning in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead in 1981. The actor appeared in the two sequels that followed and several spin-offs and video game adventures including three seasons of Starz's Ash vs. Evil Dead. Campbell has decided to wear the producer's hat on Evil Dead Rise, much like he did on the 2013 reboot.

The 2013 film was more a soft reboot for the franchise and followed a group of five friends that head to a remote cabin where their discovery of a Book of the Dead leads them to unwittingly summon up demons living in the woods. The film was led by a female hero named Mia Allen (Jane Levy) and this is something that will continue in Evil Dead Rise, albeit, with a different female character. Fans may be disappointed that Campbell isn't back as Ash for the next film but the actor justified the approach last year when he said "What we're doing now is we're saying, 'Look, this is another Evil Dead movie and that book gets around, a lot of people run into it and it's another story." 

Campbell also pointed out that the horror in Evil Dead comes from regular people having to stop this unstoppable evil force and taking someone like Ash out of it grounds it a bit in a more realistic direction:

"The main key with Evil Dead is they're just regular people who are battling what seems to be an unstoppable evil, and so that's where the horror comes from. It's not someone who's skilled. They're not fighting a soldier. They're not fighting a scientist. They're not fighting anybody more than your average neighbor. This one is going to be a similar thing. We're going to have a heroine, a woman in charge, and she's going to try and save her family."

It's probably best that they want to take the franchise in a new direction so it's not just a retread of things that came before. Having the film being set in an urban setting and taking the evil out of the isolation of the woods into a more crowded setting could allow the story to expand in ways that it hasn't been able to before. 

If Evil Dead fans are missing Ash, they can catch out his return in the upcoming video game, Evil Dead: The Game. Reportedly the game will feature multiple maps from the franchise and is expected to be released this year on Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/4, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows. That's the cool thing about the franchise. Even though Bruce Campbell won't be back as Ash in Evil Dead Rise, he can still carry on with the character via various offshoots that can keep the legacy of the character alive.

Are YOU looking forward to Evil Dead Rise?