With the remake of 1981's Evil Dead about to hit screens and Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great And Powerful just days away from release, it should come as no surprise that Mr. Raimi is back on the interview circuit fielding **Evil Dead 4 **questions - questions he's got a positive answer for...
Speaking on the red carpet for Oz: The Great And Powerful's UK premiere, Raimi responded to a query on the state of the fourth film's script with these words: "I would love to make Evil Dead 4. My brother and I plan to work on the script this summer."
Back in 2009 Raimi exclusively revealed to **Empire that the script was about "nine pages so far. Every time I'm with my brother Ivan, we write another page of it. It's in Detroit and in my garage." Four years later, fans of Ash and his inquisitive hand are going to have to hope Ivan and Sam have spent a lot more time with each other of late.
Raimi then confirmed that he has Bruce Campbell firmly in mind to reprise the iconic role of Ash ("Unless you think I should do it?"), sharing some other pointers on what the script has in store so far. "There's some dialogue. Ash being an idiot. Ash taking some abuse. Some character stuff and then some structure of Act Two. Just other possibilities for things that could happen. It's ideas, jokes, things we'd like to see."
That said, that was a good four years ago and Raimi's said words to this effect a few times before - and even mentioned that he's been "forced" into it by fans - so it's safe to say that things are still firmly up in the air. But for diehard Deadite aficionados, even tiny snippets like this are very encouraging, so here's hoping that Detroit garage is busy this summer.
Updated: Sam Raimi's has dialed back his previous statement a notch or two now. Speaking to Bleeding Cool, he said the following:
"Those guys made me say that. I am thinking about it but a crowd goes 'Come on Sam, do it!' so I said 'Okay, I guess I was talking to my brother about it.' But I feel like I was pushed into saying that, a little bit. In the hallway today I joked with Ivan, 'Get working on that script!' but I really don't know."
"I'm afraid that every time I talk about it people get really mad at me when I don't follow through with it. I would like to work on the script over the summer, that much is true. But the reason to come back and do it again is only that they're making me, those fans."
The Evil Dead re-do is out on April 19. Oz: The Great And Powerful is out on March 8.