By: Heather Seebach
The news out of San Diego International Comic Con is that Sam Raimi has announced his involvement with an Evil Dead television series. His brother Ivan and frequent collaborator Bruce Campbell are also involved. Well, inevitably the reaction largely looks like this:
And so and so forth. "Dead horse" comes up a lot. Basically, this is the same reaction that the Evil Dead "remake" (which wasn't really a remake at all) got when it was announced. Well, until it turned out to be a blood-soaked chunk of awesomeness and everyone shut the fuck up.
Now, the television show announcement is causing the same "outrage." We've been down this road so many times. How exactly is this "beating a dead horse" or "a blatant money-grab" when those same fans are BEGGING for an Evil Dead 4? So making a sequel in a franchise that has been dormant for 20+ years starring a middle-aged B-actor is NOT a money-grab, though? Look, I want a fourth film by Sam and Bruce more than anyone but as a hardcore ED fan, I also look forward to Sam being involved in this series at all! Prior to Fede Alvarez's movie, Raimi had zero interest in Evil Dead anymore. In the two decades that followed Army of Darkness, we got a Kevin Costner baseball movie, Spider-Man, and a shitload of Xena. Yes, thankfully we got Darkman, the occasional Coen collaboration and A Simple Plan, too. Finally, he made Drag Me to Hell and this Raimi fan nearly shit her pants! He was finally showing an interest in horror again, and clearly it rattled something loose inside the man because he came back aboard the Evil Dead train then.
Now, naturally people accuse Sam of being a greedy dickhead just trying to squeeze more money out of the franchise....because he's SO poor from those superhero movies. I can only say I know that's not true from being an avid follower of the man and his work ethic. Obviously, I cannot convince you of that so instead I'll say - who cares? It's business. Even if these are nothing more than money-grabs, they still have the potential to give us fans exactly what we want! Evil Dead 4 would be the ultimate cash-grab but I fucking want it so hard!!! So who am I to judge?
Furthermore, why the sudden outrage over television adaptations? Bates Motel, Fargo, and Hannibal are also adaptations of movies that really never needed a tv remake but they turned out AWESOME! Each one of them had very skeptical fans when they were announced. So have faith, my friends. The fact that Raimi maintains an active interest at all, along with the Bruce Campbell (who usually wants nothing to do with these films) and Ivan Raimi, is amazing!
The other complaint I am hearing is, what the fuck would this show even be about? Well, I imagine (much like Fargo) it would be in the style of the original movie but not directly related. In fact, seeing as Sam is close friends with the Coen Brothers, I would not be surprised if Fargo was his inspiration for this. I imagine it cannot stay in the cabin. I like to think it would show deadites all over the world and different time periods. Like how Army of Darkness took the story and put it in medieval Europe. I think that could be pretty great, actually!
What say you, primitive screwheads? Are you open-minded to this tv show and what would you like to see in it?
