After the theatrical release of Sam Raimi’s Army Of Darkness in 1993, it appeared that Evil Dead did not have a future as a movie franchise. Though both The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II had gained cult followings during the 1980s, the second sequel did not perform well at all on the big screen, and the idea of continuing the adventures of hero Ashley J. Williams was not sellable. As I noted in last week’s column about the 2013 Evil Dead reboot/remake, this thankfully didn’t derail the careers of the filmmakers involved, as Raimi, producer Rob Tapert and star Bruce Campbell all found continued success through the 1990s – both furthering their individual careers and still collaborating (for example, Raimi and Tapert produced the shows Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, which featured Campbell as the recurring character Autolycus.)
But the dream of making an Evil Dead 4/Army Of Darkness 2 never totally left their minds. The horror franchise may have seemed lifeless from an outsider perspective, but Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan (who co-wrote the script for Army Of Darkness) continued to pursue different ideas and work on multiple drafts of a screenplay. As they describe on the commentary track for the first episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead, one idea for a follow-up had Ash as a documentary filmmaker traveling the country trying to tell people his story, and another was a futuristic sci-fi tale called Ash vs. The Machines.
