The Evil Dead is moving to the city: director Lee Cronin says his reboot of the franchise will star a female heroine in an urban setting. Sam Raimi's 1981 zombie film has spawned a series of horror-comedies including the recent Starz show Ash vs Evil Dead.

Unlike Cronin's modern reimagining, Raimi's original pits Bruce Campbell against the rural undead when a group of friends on vacation in the middle of nowhere accidentally summon evil spirits to their rented cabin. The movie popularized an entire sub-genre based on its premise, which would eventually become a trope later parodied in Drew Goddard's 2011 movie The Cabin in the Woods. Subsequent films in Raimi's cult trilogy introduced a comedic tone to Ash's (Campbell) neverending battle with the "deadites" that characterized the franchise. Ash vs Evil Dead checks in with Ash 30 years later as Campbell returns to the fight for three seasons.

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Cronin tells Bloody Disgusting that his reboot, currently titled Evil Dead Rise, will feature a female heroine in a city somewhere, possibly in a high-rise apartment building. Different versions of an Evil Dead sequel have been discussed for years; Raimi has previously talked about plans to return to Ash's storyline with Campbell yet again in an Army of Darkness sequel that picks up after the events of the third movie. The forthcoming reboot won't focus on Ash, but Raimi and Campbell are both closely involved with the project: Raimi personally tapped Cronin to direct based on his script, and Campbell is producing. On The Boo Crew Podcast, Cronin hints that his movie will return to the trilogy's horrific roots with more scares than laughs:

I’m confident I’m going to do something that’s both familiar and refreshing. I’m gonna deliver a rollercoaster of horror. That’s what the goal is here. Relentless. Not stopping to explain too much. It needs to be extremely visceral, highly entertaining, properly scary. To push boundaries, that’s important as well.

Ash, Mia, and Pablo look up while being injured in a still from Ash vs Evil Dead

Campbell, in an interview with AL.com, said the story focuses on a "woman in charge" who's trying to protect her family. This won't be the first time a woman has taken on the awakened dead: a soft reboot in 2013 directed by Fede Alvarez stars Jane Levy as Mia, a new protagonist in the series. Ash vs Evil Dead also drafted its female leads Kelly Maxwell (Dana DeLorenzo) and Brandy Barr (Arielle Carver-O’Neill) into the war with the deadites. Cronin hasn't revealed whether Evil Dead Rise will include any of the franchise's existing characters, but the director's vision of a "modern-day" story suggests the movie will center around mostly new players.

Campbell said the sequel takes place when "that book gets around, a lot of people run into it and it’s another story," which implies new people will encounter the Book of the Dead in Evil Dead Rise. A sequel focusing on new characters in a new setting is long overdue for a franchise that has gotten so much mileage off of its original protagonist (Campbell himself has previously spoken about wanting a younger actor to take up the mantle in Evil Dead Rise). Cronin's plan for a bonafide horror movie should also be a refreshing take on the series after it veered so far into slapstick territory.

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Source: Bloody Disgusting/AL.com