Ash vs Evil Dead, currently exclusively available to view in the region on the Starz Play streaming service, is the latest instalment in Sam Raimi's long-running and ever-popular Evil Dead franchise.
Raimi, who serves as executive producer of the 10-part series, also directed the first episode, and is joined as executive producer by the original movie’s co-creators Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell, who reprises his role as the franchise’s hedonistic anti-hero Ash.
The new series, which also stars Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) and Ray Santiago (Meet the Fockers), sees another Deadite plague threaten to destroy mankind, with Ash forced to confront his demons – personally and literally – to save the world. Lawless's mysterious Ruby, meanwhile, remains convinced that Ash is somehow the cause of the outbreak.
Following major box-office success with the original 1981 Evil Dead movie, as well as its sequels, it could seems a strange decision to move the franchise to the TV world, particular the nascent online streaming world, but Raimi told the audience at San Diego Comic Con earlier this year that the platform is the ideal place for his latest project: "My brother, Ivan, and I were writing a movie and um, it got really big," he said. "We wanted to really spend more time with Ash than we were able to in the picture because as those Evil Dead movies developed he became more and more important and, finally, by the third, Army of Darkness, [Ash was] all anybody wanted to see.
“It was a natural place to expand the storyline. It really delves into the character, spends a lot of time with Bruce”.
It may be more than 20 years since the last official Evil Dead sequel, but Raimi seemed certain that audiences will be pleased with the latest instalment: "What is great working at Starz is they really recognise that the fans wanted to see this and they didn't want to change it. They wanted us to really go to town, no holds barred, really deliver the gore, the laughs, the insanity of the Evil Dead movies."
Campbell agreed with Raimi: "That's why Starz makes sense for this show. Because we have virtually unrestricted content, the first two Evil Dead movies had no rating whatsoever. They functioned best in that environment. They need to be let loose like the savage beast that they are. And the only way that we can bring you the carnage and mayhem that you truly deserve is to be on a network where they don't have a problem with anything."
• Ash vs Evil Dead episodes are uploaded every Sunday. To register for a free seven-day trial, visit www.starzplay.com
cnewbould@thenational.ae
