Raimi on Evil Dead Sequels

If his proposed Evil Dead remake gets going, Raimi is not concerned about directing Evil Dead IV as a sequel to the original trilogy. There may be a new Evil Dead and a part four in existence, but Raimi believes fans will know the difference.

“I think the fans are really smart,” Raimi said. “I don't think they’d be confused. I’d like to make a part four. There’s this very small audience for Evil Dead IV, and if we ever make a movie called Evil Dead IV, which I’d like to make with Rob at some point and starring Bruce Campbell, I’m not saying there’s a million people, but there’s 100,000 people that will know exactly what it is and that’s about as big as the crowd is, honestly. It’s not a giant crowd. They’re a great crowd.”

Producer Robert Tapert realized that the sequel might have to be Army of Darkness II, since Universal produced the most recent sequel. “Even the people at Universal Home Video called us up one time and said, ‘We want to do a direct to video Army of Darkness II because that’s a really good title.’ We said, ‘No, that’s really Evil Dead III. They said, ‘Oh, well, we don’t care about that Evil Dead stuff but the Army of Darkness was really good.’ They’re totally confused.”

Also, after rejecting the idea for Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash on the grounds that Raimi did not want to be in a position having to protect his character within another filmmaker’s vision, word came out that Bruce Campbell really wanted to do the battle royale movie. Raimi evaded, “He might have. I don’t want to speak for Bruce. I don’t really know how he felt about it.”