Raimi And Co. Trying To Stop Unofficial Evil Dead Sequel

Chalk this up under bizarre news of the week.

Apparently a company named “Award Pictures” is claiming to have the rights to The Evil Dead franchise after Sam Raimi’s rights expired. This is quite strange, especially since Raimi is actively involved in the remake.

The proposed sequel, titled Evil Dead: Genesis Of The Necronomicon would take place in 1912 and center on a character called “Dr. Ashley” who is an archaeologist, and would focus on the origin of the book that was created when the oceans ran red with blood.

Raimi’s case is that them making it would confuse film fans into believing that Raimi and his Renaissance Pictures are behind the product, when in reality they have nothing at all to do with the film.

Here’s hoping that he succeeds, because even if the proposed Evil Dead remake turns out to be worthless, I’d rather have a Raimi authorized film than something that just wants to cash in on the name.

I can just see this film as an Asylum*-esque production that has really crappy production values and just gets everything about the franchise wrong, while people rent it because they think Raimi has finally done another Evil Dead film and it came in under the radar.

For the record, I haven’t seen Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium, but I’ve seen Creepshow 3, and that one was pretty smelly. Too bad we never got another Romero sequel, and from what I’ve read he really wanted to do a third one, but that eventually morphed into Tales From The Darkside: The Movie, which is actually pretty damn good.

*I’ve only seen 2 Asylum films I’ve liked. MILF, which was actually pretty funny, and 2012: Zombie Apocalypse, with Ving Rhames and Crab Man from My Name Is Earl. Quite liked that one. Didn’t look like the standard Asylum zero budget production.

source: the wrap