In case you weren’t following my Ash vs Evil Dead Season 1 recaps or didn’t see my Season 2 premiere reaction, let’s get this out of the way first – I’m a big AVED fan. I’m also a big fan of Fede Alvarez‘s 2013 Evil Dead film, but after that, I was a little skeptical of the idea of continuing Ash Williams’ (Bruce Campbell) story in a way that channels the original films. Well, Sam Raimi, Campbell and co. proved me wrong.
Not only is Ash vs Evil Dead a treat for longtime fans looking for deadites, over-the-top gore and that classic Ash humor and sass, but thanks to new characters like Ray Santiago and Dana DeLorenzo‘s Pablo and Kelly, the door is wide open for newcomers to join the mayhem and discover what made the 80s films so special and unforgettable.
Fans of Ash vs Evil Dead are accustomed to seeing people (and other things) die onscreen — in fact, that’s one of the reasons they watch Starz’s horror-comedy show. But according to star Bruce Campbell, the Evil Dead team have really outdone themselves with one particular demise which occurs in a season 2 episode also heavily featuring Ash’s famous car, the 1973 Delta 88.
“There’s an episode that’s basically around the Delta,” Campbell tells EW. “It’s a pretty interesting episode, with perhaps the worst onscreen death in the history of all visual arts. ‘Worst’ meaning ‘most outrageous.’ Like, ‘Am I really watching this happening? Am I really watching this unfold in front of me?’”
The exclusive image above, showing the car covered in blood, is from that very episode.
BELLINGHAM, Wash. - Shon Bury has plenty of experience when it comes to cult classics, but he was still unprepared for the response when it came to turning the movie “Evil Dead 2” into a board game.
About a year ago the company bought the rights to produce a board game based on the 1987 movie, which starred Bruce Campbell. After working with employee Taylor Smith to come up with a design and game rules, Bury decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project with a goal of $70,000.
After launching it at night, Bury woke up the next morning and discovered they had already reached that goal. By Thursday afternoon, July 28, the campaign received more than $385,000 in pledges and still had 12 days left in the campaign. It officially ends at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9.
In the early days of his career a young Bruce Campbell joined forces with the fresh filmmaker Sam Raimi in a low budget horror movie called ‘The Evil Dead’. Ever since then Bruce Campbell has taken on multiple roles in plenty of movies and television shows, but his fans will always always associate the dashing actor to the bloody franchise that helped define that decade of horror.
Who would have guessed that years after he first took on the role of Ashley “Ash” Williams that Bruce Campbell would inevitably take on the role once more? Similar to Ash’s association with the Necronomicon in the ‘Evil Dead’ universe, this is a character who’s battle against the forces of evil will never lay to rest. So fans rejoiced when the tale of the S-Mart employee turned Deadite killer continued on in the popular Starz series ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’.
The new show brought audiences right back into the blood-splattered world where an older and not-too-wiser Ash faced a new set of demons with the help of some friends. Even though they barely made it out of the first season alive, there’s still evil spreading itself out into the world – largely due to Ash’s deal with Ruby. Everything may appear cozy for Ash and his friends in Jacksonville, Florida, but their troubles are far from over.
The Evil Dead franchise is a beloved bloody series that’s lodged itself deep into horror lovers’ hearts. The bloody tales of Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) against the forces of darkness plagued the reluctant hero many years ago. But thanks to his foolish actions, he faces new enemies in the hit Starz series ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’.
Producer Robert Tapert has been with the Evil Dead franchise since the beginning, seeing the horror property multiply in gore and fans who loved every minute of it. At the other end of the spectrum is famed actress Lucy Lawless, who will always be known as the title character in ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’. Rather than shy away from roles of that same caliber, Ms. Lawless has fully embraced that badass character persona which emulates in the complex character Ruby in the ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ series.
The last time we saw Ash he was striking a deal with Ruby, getting the hell out of the ill-famed cabin that brought all the terror onto the world in the first place. Ash may have left with most of his body parts still attached on his way to Jacksonville, Florida, but the evil he’s fought all these years is fully beginning to unleash itself upon the world.
At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, ShockYa.com got the opportunity to sit down at a roundtable and speak with producer Robert Tapert and Lucy Lawless. They spoke about what kind of bloody developments fans should expect from season 2 of ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’, from Ruby’s complex story to dropping ‘Army of Darkness’ into the mix.
We were able to do interviews with Bruce Campbell, Lucy Lawless, Rob Tapert, and more for Ash vs Evil Dead Season 2!
Every San Diego Comic-Con offers a different experience and a unique hue to its vintage. Thus it’s impossible to rank one SDCC adventure over another, yet there are moments at each that stand tall. And running into Bruce Campbell and friends on several occasions this past week while they were promoting Ash vs Evil Dead season 2 certainly qualifies as a hard-to-top highlight.
Indeed, we were able to catch up with Groovy Bruce’s even groovier chin, as well as at different points Rob Tapert, who is executive producer on Ash vs Evil Dead, and fellow cast members Lucy Lawless, Dana DeLorenzo, and Ray Santiago, during a roundtable interview and the season 2 premiere screening. During it all, we learned some pretty nifty details about what we can all expect from more Deadite action this fall, baby. Well besides copious amounts of gore and chainsaw action…
If the Evil Dead franchise wants to rise again, they'll have to find the right tone to go with Ash vs Evil Dead.
The 2013 remake of Evil Deadwas quite significant, not only for bringing back a franchise, which filmmaker Sam Raimi hadn’t explored since his 1992 movie Army of Darkness, but also because it introduced much of the world to Uruguay-born director Fede Alvarez.
Alvarez’s second feature, the unsettling home invasion thriller Don’t Breathe, will open on August 26th, but since Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell have brought back the popular character of “Ash” Williams for their hit Starz television series Ash vs. Evil Dead, many fans have wondered whether we might ever see a direct sequel to Alvarez’s film.
Much of the talk at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend was about the upcoming second season of Ash vs. Evil Dead, but since Den of Geek had a chance to talk to Alvarez himself, we decided to ask him if he’d still been thinking or talking about doing an Evil Dead 2 with Jane Levy’s character.
“I’m really good friends with Sam (Raimi) and Rob (Tapert) and Bruce (Campbell)—we always chat and we really became friends after Evil Dead, so casually, the conversation always comes and goes: ‘Like what about that Evil Dead 2?’ is a question we always throw around,” he told us.
“My pitch for it was ‘Let’s combine the two worlds and have Jane from my film being fight demons back-to-back with Bruce’ and trying to tell that story, but the tone is the key. What would be the tone? Because Bruce represents a more slapstick ‘Evil Dead’ from Evil Dead 2, and my film is more faithful to the first Evil Dead where they weren’t trying to be funny at any level, though some people believe they were. I know them pretty well, and they weren’t trying to be funny at any level, they were just being over-the-top. Trying to find a tone is key to that movie. Now that Bruce is back in a way--because suddenly, his show is going to a third season and people know about him and the newer generation knows why he’s so cool and he’s the character that he is--now might be the time to try that.”
Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorenzo, Ted Raimi, Lee Majors, Lucy Lawless, and Bruce Campbell take the San Diego Comic-Con stage for a bloody good time, moderated by Dominic Patten.
“Ash vs Evil Dead” follows Ash, the stock boy, aging lothario and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years avoiding responsibility, maturity and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons –personal and literal. Destiny, it turns out, has no plans to release the unlikely hero from its “Evil” grip.
Yesterday’s Ash vs Evil Dead Comic-Con panel was catnip for all the gorehounds who turned out to see Bruce “El Jefe” Campbell in person—as well as Sam Raimi, Lucy Lawless, Lee Majors, Ted Raimi, Dana DeLorenzo, Ray Santiago and Rob Tapert. Most also participated in a press room earlier in the day.
One big change for the Starz show’s second season, which kicks off on Halloween, is that television legend Majors (The Fall Guy, The Six Million Dollar Man) is aboard to play Ash’s cantankerous father. (Campbell joked that they had to cast Majors, since he’s “the only other actor working in Hollywood who still has hair on his body,” and prompted Majors to give proof.) Majors—who was attending Comic-Con for the first time—explained how he came to be involved with the show.
“When they approached me, I was not that familiar with the show, but I knew what it was,” he admitted during the press room, in a tale he repeated for the panel. “I viewed the first episode, and then I kept viewing and viewing and viewing, all 10 episodes at one time. I said, ‘This is a fun show.’ I never associated so much horror and blood with being fun, but it’s just hilarious, the crew is so good, and the chemistry all seemed to work very well. It’s so well-done, and I don’t mind being a part of it.”
The Evil Dead universe is about to collide and then we’ll collectively explode.
It’s been reported multiple times that Starz’s “Ash vs Evil Dead” has bits and pieces of what was once to be the long-gestured Evil Dead 4. Hearing that made it appear that a fourth film would no longer be in the cards, which was slightly disappointing considering Ash’s cameo at the end of the Evil Dead remake (Fede Alvarez’s film is actually a sequel, in the same universe, but shhhhhh). Still, it’s hard to complain when we get a full blown Evil Dead television series…
Starz and co. are at the ongoing San Diego Comic-Con hyping up the home video release of Season One, with the follow-up season set to return this coming October. During one of the press panels, executive producer Rob Tapert revealed that Evil Dead 4 is still in the cards!
At San Diego Comic-Con, Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, and Lee Majors hint about revisiting the events and characters of the first Evil Dead.
Ashley Williams, the chainsaw-handed and dubious messiah of Ash vs Evil Dead has had a sordid family history. That kind of comes with the territory when you read from the Book of the Dead, and it directly leads to the possession and hellbound slaughter of your sister, as seen in the original The Evil Dead. Yet, that familial freak out caused by Bruce Campbell’s buffoonish anti-hero has never been really referenced in the subsequent sequels and TV show spin-offs… until now.
While chatting with Campbell and Ash executive producer Rob Tapert during separate roundtable interviews at San Diego Comic-Con, I brought up the fact that Ash is not only revisiting his father, who is being played by TV legend Lee Majors, for the first time in any medium, but that he inevitably will also have to address the death of his sister. Incidentally, the thing about death in properties like Evil Dead is that characters don’t need to stay gone.
Ash Williams was prohibited from referencing one of his grooviest adventures on the first season of Ash vs Evil Dead, but Army of Darkness will finally get its due on the Starz series when the show returns for season 2.
During IGN's San Diego Comic-Con livestream, Ash vs Evil Dead's executive producer Rob Tapert revealed that the rights issues that once prevented the show from acknowledging the third film in the Evil Dead universe, Army of Darkness, are no longer an obstacle. Not only have those problems apparently been resolved, but also the show fully intends on referencing Ash's time-hopping journey in the next season.
"We actually can reference [Army of Darkness], and we reference it in this coming season," Tapert said during IGN's livestream.
"We just don't pull upon that universe, but this coming season Ash is able to talk about events that happened in Army of Darkness, although people are not likely to believe him, of course," he continued.
Showrunner Craig DiGregorio previously explained to IGN last year that legal rights issues prevented the show from mentioning the third film in the franchise. DiGregorio did note at the time Ash was still the Ash from that film, he just couldn't happen to allude to Ash's time-traveling adventure to 1300 AD.
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When it comes to coverage of the San Diego Comic-Con, we don’t screw around! If it’s there and it’s horror, we will find it and bring it back to you! Case in point: Your first look at “Ash vs. Evil Dead” Season 1’s steelbook packaging!
There’s good and bad news for Bruce Campbell’s ghoul-battling Ash Williams in season 2 of the horror comedy Ash vs Evil Dead, which premieres on Starz in October. The bad? A lot of really awful stuff happens. The good? Much of it happens to Ash’s protégé Pablo (Ray Santiago).
“Pablo’s got a crazy journey this year,” chuckles Campbell. “The stuff he goes through makes my life seem easy. I think we’re going to find out that he’s not just Ash’s sidekick. I don’t think Ray had any idea what was coming. Some of the horrors that await Pablo…”
Ash starts the season enjoying the good life in Jacksonville, Fla. “We find Ash right where he wants to be: having keggers, and hanging with chicks, and living the good life in Jacksonville,” says Campbell. “He’s through with all this business. No strings on him. And what could possibly go wrong, right?” So much does, of course, and it forces Pablo, Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), and Ash to head to the latter’s hometown of Elk Grove, Mich. “Things go massively wrong,” says the actor. “Things turn south, so the team has to turn north. [This season] it’s ‘Ash goes home.’”
New cast members include Evil Dead franchise veteran Ted Raimi as one of Ash’s childhood friends and TV icon Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man, The Fall Guy) as our not-always-heroic hero’s father.“He’s even grumpier than Ash,” says Campbell. Ash vs Grumpy Dad? Can’t wait!
You can see an exclusive image of Bruce Campbell and Lee Majors, above.
“Ash vs Evil Dead” follows Ash, the stock boy, aging lothario and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years avoiding responsibility, maturity and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons –personal and literal. Destiny, it turns out, has no plans to release the unlikely hero from its “Evil” grip.
Guess we’re not the only ones hanging out until the October return of Starz’s demonically fun scarefest Ash vs. Evil Dead. In Season 2 of the gore-soaked follow-up to the cult horror-movie hits, Pablo (Ray Santiago) gets yet another lesson in what it means to be the loyal sidekick to demon-hunting Ash (Bruce Campbell) when he runs afoul of Lucy Lawless’s vindictive Ruby.
“Amongst the many ways Pablo is tortured is by spending a day hog-tied, suspended in the air,” says Santiago, who literally hung in there during the filming of Episode 2. Santiago also praised acting with “the amazing Lucy ‘Flawless.’ The crew wanted to bring me down in between takes, but I refused,” he says. “It’s the Evil Dead, man … I got this!”
Sure, in real life, Lucy Lawless and Bruce Campbell have already teamed up in the new Ash Vs. Evil Dead TV show. But now their heroic counterparts are uniting in the pages of comic books, for a new series spinning out of their current ongoings at Dynamite Entertainment. Expect lots of glorious undead killing!
Just when we thought that “Ash vs Evil Dead” couldn’t get any better, horror veteran Ted Raimi was added to the cast for the second season of the hit program which will return to Starz Channel this fall.
Raimi will play Ash’s (Bruce Campbell) best friend from childhood and brings with him a unique style and humor developed over a career which has spanned nearly forty years that is sure to further enrich The Evil Dead universe, of which Raimi is very familiar.
“Ash vs Evil Dead,” the 10-episode half-hour STARZ Original series, is the long-awaited follow-up to the classic horror film The Evil Dead. The series is executive produced by Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, The Grudge), Rob Tapert (The Evil Dead, The Grudge), and Bruce Campbell (“Burn Notice,” Oz the Great and Powerful, The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness), the original filmmakers, and Craig DiGregorio who serves as executive producer and showrunner.
With a suggested retail price of $49.99 for Blu-ray and $39.98 for DVD, “Ash vs Evil Dead” includes exclusive audio commentaries by Bruce Campbell and more!
This is a fanboy’s dream come true, the heroic union of a childhood icon with one from my adulthood – a pairing that looks and feels exactly perfect! Lee Majors, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN himself, is joining ASH VS. EVIL DEAD in its second season to play Brock Williams, Ash’s never-before-seen father! Can you imagine – the Bionic Man and a guy with a chainsaw for an arm teaming up to battle the Deadite menace? It doesn’t get any better than this!
Anchor Bay Entertainment will bring Deadites and zombies to Comic-Con this year.
At their Comic-Con Booth #4437, Anchor Bay Entertainment will have several groovy treats for horror fans. You can get your photo with the Ash vs Evil Dead toolshed or take a selfie with walkers from Fear The Walking Dead. Exclusives for the Season 6 Blu-ray of The Walking Dead will also be on display, which means that fans will be able to see the limited edition truck walker case that’s due out in November.
The recently announced Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn board game from Space Goat Play blew away all expectations when its Kickstarter hit its goal in seemingly no time at all. As of this post going live, the page has right around 3,200 backers and over $240,000 committed to making it a reality, which allowed it to break five stretch goals and even necessitated a few more being added.
Personally, I’m really excited by the prospect of an official Evil Dead II board game. Hanging out with friends is great but if the same activities are done over and over, it can begin to feel a little stale and even potentially somewhat boring. Having different options keeps things fresh and entertaining for everyone and this board game is perfect for all my horror-loving pals!
Now, I know just how busy the Space Goat people must be with the explosive popularity of their Kickstarter, so color me amazed and very excited to get a chance to do an interview with media coordinator JD Boucher and game designer Taylor Smith!
Dramatic Publishing Company has announced its exclusive representation of the North American professional and amateur stage performance rights to EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL. Now in its fifth smash year in Las Vegas, the 'killer musical' joins the Dramatic Publishing catalog alongside other great plays and musicals such as A CHRISTMAS STORY THE MUSICAL, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, TWELVE ANGRY MEN, ALL AMERICAN, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, STRAIGHT, and 1984.
The company's president, Christopher Sergel III, stated, "Dramatic Publishing is honored and delighted to include EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL in our catalog. It has become a wildly popular musical classic and we will continue to build on this legacy."
Check out the highlights of Bashcon 2016! Film Historian Greg Mank on Karloff and Lugosi! The colorful characters and costumes! An on the spot interview with the FX specialist who worked on the Evil Dead: Tom Sullivan! Plus: Lots of Loot!
Space Goat Productions and StudioCanal is launching a Kickstarter for Evil Dead 2™: The Official Board Game based off of the cult-classic horror movie.
Bellingham, WA (PRUnderground) July 7th, 2016
Board games are about to get a lot more groovy–and gory–with The Official Evil Dead 2 Board Game. The game is a tile- and miniature-based survival-horror game launching today on Kickstarter, produced by Space Goat Play (a division of Space Goat Productions) in conjunction with Studiocanal. And it’s Certified Groovy.
The game is designed with both casual and veteran board game fans in mind. Depicting the terrifying and iconic characters, monsters, and locales from Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi cult classic, the official Evil Dead 2 Board Game is the definitive tabletop experience for Evil Dead 2 fans. 2-6 players will work together in 90–120 minute sessions to gather pages of the Ex-Mortis while trying to survive demon attacks, supernatural events, and avoid turning into evil deadites themselves.
The game contains 8 figures which includes Ash, Annie, Jake, Ed, Bobby Jo, and Linda as well as Deadites and, naturally, Ash’s severed hand. The board game also includes custom Evil Dead 2 dice, a fully illustrated tile based board featuring the iconic cabin and the prequel mini-comic.
Space Goat has partnered with Kickstarter veterans Backerkit in order to process and execute the Kickstarter campaign. “Launching a Kickstarter for a project this large is a major endeavour,” said Space Goat’s crowdfunding coordinator JD Boucher. “Which is why recruited the help of Backerkit to ensure that our donors are taken care of. Your Kickstarter pledges are in capable hands”
The campaign also offers a standard and deluxe edition for donors to select from. The deluxe edition features exclusive figures of Ash Williams, Deadite Henrietta, and a box based on the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the Book of the Dead. More figures and features will be added as the campaign goes on, as well as retailer pledge levels. Six lucky fans will also get a chance to get their likenesses drawn into either the game or a future Evil Dead 2 comic book. The Kickstarter campaign will run 30 days. To see the complete Kickstarter campaign visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evildead2/evil-dead-2-the-official-board-game
Here’s your first look at the second season of “Ash vs Evil Dead” and DAMN does it bring the goods! You want new monsters? You got ’em. How about buckets of blood and gore? Check! Maybe some gleeful violence? Oooooh yeah…
Originally passed for theatres in 1982 (with an X Certificate) with 49 seconds of cuts, Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead followed up its UK cinema release with a 1983 home video version that would see it become the most infamous home video in history.
This documentary is about the Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 filming locations. If you were involved in either film or were around and have a story to tell please contact me at matthew@luminousmidnight.com
Alright Deadites, it’s almost time to get groovy again! Later this year, Starz is bringing back Ash vs Evil Dead for a second season, and fans at Comic-Con are going to be getting an early preview. But before that happens, we’ve got the first cast photo from the new season!
However, a brief recap is in order. Although Bruce Campbell‘s iconic imbecile was drawn out of his self-imposed retirement from fighting the Deadites, the first season finale ended with Ash seemingly abandoning his responsibilities as the Chosen One to escape to Jacksonville, Florida. It was Ash’s greatest desire, and he wasn’t completely selfish about it. After all, he did include the survival of Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) in his deal with Ruby (Lucy Lawless), which left her in control of the Necronomicon.
Naturally, that happy ending is not going to last. And in this photo, it looks like Team Ash will have a surprising new member: Ruby!
Set in an ostensible “post post-apocalypse,” STARZ‘ recent Ash vs Evil Dead series, co-created by original filmmaker Sam Raimi, with brother Ivan Raimi, has the titular Ash Williams, once again essayed by a grim-yet-humorous Bruce Campbell, as a thirty-years-older fighter of the “deadite” menace.