The Evil Dead Shall Rise Again…

Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are re-booting The Evil Dead. Teaming with original producer Rob Tapert under Raimi’s Ghost House company.
Co-written (and directed) by Fede Alvarez and… wait for it, Diablo Cody who’ll be running her eyes over the final draft.

Campbell alluded to the announcement via tweeting, “Believe in the remake, dawg!”

The official statement:
“We are committed to making this movie and are inspired by the enduring popularity and enthusiasm for The Evil Dead series. We can’t wait to scare a new generation of moviegoers using film-making techniques that were not available to us thirty years ago as well as Fede bringing a fresh eye to the film’s original elements.”

The original film told the story of five college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in the woods. Their vacation became gruesome when they find an audiotape that released evil spirits that start to possess them… and the local fauna.

On a budget of just a few hundred thousand, The Evil Dead would become a world-wide phenomena, but not before many hoops and legalities were jumped. Bruce Campbell and producer Robert Tapert never saw their horror movie doing anything except the rounds on the drive-in or grind house circuit, but when Stephen King gave them the endorsement ‘…the most ferociously original horror movie of the year’, it rocketed to international infamy. The film was extremely controversial for its graphic terror, violence, and gore, being initially turned down by almost all U.S. film distributors until a European company finally bought it in the Cannes Film Festival marketplace.

A great article on the censorship Hell for the UK fans can be found here: while here’s Fede Alvarez’s short that so impressed Raimi and Campbell he’s now on directing duty.