The Evil Dead are set to rise again. Filmmaker Francis Galluppi has been tapped to write and direct a new movie in the immortal horror franchise. Deadline reports that Galluppi approached Evil Dead impresario Sam Raimi with a proposal for the franchise, which impressed him enough to metaphorically hand over the keys to his filmic Oldsmobile Delta 88.
In a statement, Raimi lavished praise on the filmmaker, saying “Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence. He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.” That feature debut, the crime thriller The Last Stop in Yuma County, premiered at last year’s Fantastic Fest and is scheduled to be released on digital and in select theaters on May 10. The tale of a knife salesman stranded at a remote rest stop with a pair of bank robbers, it stars Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, and Richard Brake. Prior to making the film, Galluppi directed several music videos for the indie rock band Mt. Joy.
What is ‘The Evil Dead’?
The Evil Dead franchise is proof that success can come from even the humblest beginnings. In this case, those humble beginnings are a movie made with five unknown actors (including Bruce Campbell), some goopy special effects, and less than $400,000 USD. The resulting 1981 film, The Evil Dead, told the tale of a group of friends who accidentally unleashed the evil of the ancient Necronomicon, and became a cult hit. The 1985 sequel, Evil Dead II, added Raimi‘s love of slapstick comedy into the mix, and spawned a third film, the medieval horror comedy Army of Darkness. Fede Álvarez remade the original film in 2013, and a Campbell-led TV series, Ash vs. Evil Dead, ran for three seasons on Starz. Most recently, Lee Cronin‘s Evil Dead Rise hit theaters in 2023, earning nearly $150 million USD to make it the highest-grossing (emphasis on “gross”) of the series.
Galluppi‘s film isn’t the only Evil Dead project in the works. According to longtime Raimi collaborator Bruce Campbell, Raimi intends to keep the gore flowing with new Evil Dead movies “every two to three years“.
Francis Galluppi‘s Evil Dead project is in the early stages of development; no release date has yet been set. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
via Collider