After a 23-year hiatus, Bruce Campbell is finally returning to fight the "Evil Dead" as Ash Williams. Starz is raising the franchise from the dead with the half-hour horror-comedy series "Ash vs. Evil Dead" in late 2015. Ten episodes are planned for the initial run with more to hopefully follow.
The overall premise for the series is: Ash is now living in a trailer park and working his latest unrewarding retail store job when a reappearance of the Deadites incites him to take a road trip with two young co-workers (and, of course, his mighty boomstick).
The fine folks at Entertainment Weekly caught up with Campbell and spoke with him about the upcoming series.
"We realized if we made another movie, frankly, it would probably be too expensive," the actor/producer said when queried about the raison d'être of doing an "Evil Dead" series now. "But in the format of a TV show, we could give people exactly what they wanted and expand the character and the story even more. Ash would probably have more dialogue in one season than in three movies. He'll have to become a more fleshed-out character as well. And we never burned 'Evil Dead' as a franchise out-it's not like we did 13 of these movies. So we felt like, what the heck, let's give it a try."
When asked about the lasting popularity of the Ash character, Campbell replied: "He continues to be a trash-talking know-it-all who doesn't really know anything. He's the ultimate anti-hero. He's a guy with no appreciable skills. He's not a former Navy SEAL, he's not a former CIA or FBI. He's no special anything. He's just a guy from S-Mart, you know? And think that's part of what people relate too. All these super hero movies-I rather relate to a garage mechanic who gets into a sticky situation. That's what I look forward to playing-a guy with horrible flaws. In 'Army of Darkness' he can't memorize three words and he's responsible for the deaths of a 100 people-this is your lead character!"
"Starz was the ultimate fit for us," Campbell stated when asked about the cable network. "Because Rob has experience on 'Spartacus' with them. And it's a show they were very eager to get. And sometimes on projects, you're eager to be with people who are eager. They were willing to meet some parameters creatively that we thought were incredibly important."
When pressed on what exactly those "creative parameters" were, the actor quipped, in typical Ash-fashion, "I'm not going to tell you!"
Stay tuned to HNGN for more on "Ash vs. Evil Dead" as it develops.
