Much as rumor has churned and Bruce Campbell has been asked, there’s no remake of Sam Raimi’s watershed Evil Dead in sight. That won’t stop Ghost House from squeezing out some more dollars from the cult classic, and they’ve teamed up with an experienced app developer that has created a +30-level iOS game based on the franchise. Half of the game retells the story of the first film, before the second part kicks in with a new story of Ash kicking haunted, undead ass.
THR’s coverage of the story focuses on the obvious motivation behind this kind of deal- plunging more cash from “dormant franchises.”
The smartphone app landscape is both brave and new (perhaps wordly as well), where easily developed games can ride a property’s built-in cache with much more efficiency than a console game, with their millions in development costs and somtimes years of lead time. App games are light, easily developed, and exist in a much more universal marketplace driven by impulse buys. It is now more than ever that you can essentially sell a logo to people, and if you happen to make something that’s actually good to back it, then your return will be even larger.
Another recent example of this kind of thing is the Hobo With A Shotgun iphone Game, which was put together on little more than a whim, and timed perfectly with the film’s festival debuts and online release. Even though the game isn’t all that great (Andrew Hawkin’s review on our sister site, GUY), it also wasn’t expensive, and it’s a fun way of spending a few minutes with the franchise/aesthetic before moving on with your life. Obviously Hobo isn’t a dormant franchise, but it’s a grassroots film with a small, multi-tier indie release- so the comparison stands well enough.
It does sound as though this Evil Dead game is a bit more substantial than your average movie tie-in game (which are sometimes little more than interactive fliers), and it’s also a full 3D action shooter instead of an 8-bit throwback or some other gimmicky approach. Ultimately, at $2.99 and $4.99 for the iPhone and iPad versions respectively, there’s little financial risk involved with spending some time with your favorite horror hero.
The app is still worming through the bowels of Apple’s app approval process, so we’ll let you know when it’s out and what we think.
This something the chewing iPhone owners out there are interested in? Let us know in the comments or on the boards…
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