Filming on Lee Cronin’s addition to the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise, was completed last month, he announced on social media. A rough cut of Evil Dead Rise has already been completed, according to executive producer Bruce Campbell in an interview published on BlairWitch.de.
We’ve seen a rough of it already and it has all the components we need. Like anything, when you see a rough version it just has to be tightened, but we’re good. We’re in good shape.
Evil Dead Rise
Bruce Campbell
Campbell responded to the question about how this Evil Dead film will differ from the ones that have come before,
This one’s dark, this one’s pretty serious. Good, strong performances. It’s a single mom who now has to deal with this book. These days it’s more about the book. That book gets around, that book is handed around, passed along, people try and get rid of it, they try to bury it or destroy it and they really can’t. So this book just keeps popping up, so really it’s just another story of what happens if this book appears in this particular group of people’s lives and how it intersects.
Evil Dead Rise
Bruce Campbell
Sam Raimi selected Cronin to write and direct his second feature film, Evil Dead Rise, which he also serves as an executive producer on. Cronin previously made his feature directorial debut with 2019’s The Hole in the Ground. As Campbell says, when they work with a new director for an Evil Dead project, they usually bring the following to the table:
We let ’em have a lot of creative leeway, but the basics stay the same. The book, the possession, the rules of how you get rid of them. Every new heroine or hero has to learn how to dispel the evil because there are certain ways you conjure it, and there are certain ways you get rid of it. And not everybody figures that out easily. This family is not the same at the end of the movie. The whole family’s destroyed. These people get possessed; brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. This one’s a family affair. They’re all related in this one. I think that makes the possession and killing your siblings, things like that, even harder.
Evil Dead Rise
Bruce Campbell
It makes the film “much more excruciating” that the characters are all related to one another.
A road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie, who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped L.A apartment. The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons, and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable
In the story, two estranged sisters are played by Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland. The three kids of Ellie are Gabrielle Echols, Morgan Davies, and Nell Fisher. A girl whose passion is fashion and Instagram, Mia Challis plays Jessica, a young 18-year-old. Despite being smarter than she lets on, Jessica enjoys being the center of attention.
Since Campbell retired as franchise hero Ash, he does not have an acting role in the film.
Robert Tapert produced Evil Dead Rise, a collaboration between Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, and Ghost House Pictures. Executive producers are Romel Adam, John Keville, and Macdara Kelleher.
HBO Max will be streaming Evil Dead Rise, but no date has been set for its release.
