What Is Sam Raimi Cooking in ‘Evil Dead Wrath’?

With Evil Dead Burn coming out on July 10, there is a lot of chatter going around about the franchise, especially given that Burn is just one of two new installments coming out in the next few years. Evil Dead Wrath just wrapped production, with a release date set for April 7, 2028. However, for a while not much had been known regarding its plot.

That changed recently, when producer Rob Tapert mentioned that Wrath will take place in 1972, predating everything about the franchise. That means that it will take place before Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) arrived to that fateful cabin in the woods.

“It will feel like a 1972 movie because the director and his DP want to imitate the film’s look and feel of something that’s called Ektachrome 100, which was a film stock,” said Tapert. “Still available. A lot of movies shot on back then. And so it’s very warm, very tungsten.”

Tapert goes on to call Wrath “very Tarantino-esque, very deliberate. [Galluppi] made a movie, not a horror movie, that I liked a great deal called Last Stop in Yuma County. It’s worth looking up.”

Charlotte Hope, Jessica McNamee, Zach Gilford, Josh Helman, Ella Newton, Elizabeth Cullen, and Ella Oliphant will star in Evil Dead Wrath. Franchise creator Sam Raimi is producing with Tapert, and Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin will executive produce alongside Romel Adam and Jose Canas.

What will this mean for fans of the franchise?

Though nothing else is currently known besides the time period, a prequel can do a lot of things to a franchise. Given that there will creatively be room to adjust the lore, or even retcon certain things, those are both possibilities. Stylistically, though, going all the way back to the 70s, and making sure the film looks like it is from that time period, is an intriguing decision.

With franchises like Evil Dead, longevity relies on both keeping installments fresh and ensuring that they also stick to what made fans love them in the first place. This particular franchise has branched out in a lot of different ways, but at its core it remained the same: Committed to being as bloody as possible. Wrath will surely follow in these footsteps.

It will be a while before we can see what Wrath is all about. But we have Evil Dead Burn to look forward to in the meantime. Make sure you check that one out when it hits theaters next month.

(Featured image: Warner Bros.)

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