Sam Raimi Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

New Line and Warner Bros’ Evil Dead Rise freaked out $2.5M last night from previews that began at 7PM at 3,000 locations.

It’s “Mommie Dearest” gone wild.In the first scene, though, we’re back in one of those creepy, secluded cottages that made the 1981 film a classic. Out in the woods, a girl-turned-“Deadite” kills her two friends before an on-screen message reads: “One day earlier.” The location shifts to the soon-to-be-demolished city apartment building of Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), a mother of three kids who recently separated from her husband. The night her sister Beth (Lily Sullivan), a rebellious concert roadie, comes to visit, an earthquake opens a hole in their parking garage concealing our old friend the Book of the Dead and some vinyl recordings of spooky incantations.Teenage Danny (Morgan Davies) decides to pop them on his turntable and, you know, accidentally destroys his family, including sisters Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher).Demons are unleashed, one enters Ellie’s body and then Mother Monster brutally goes after Beth and the kids. I vastly prefer the “Evil Dead” series to, say, never-ending “Scream” because unlike with Ghostface, no elaborate narrative excuse needs to be drummed up for why ancient evil spirits are still slumming it on earth.

the “Evil Dead” franchise know the drill — get some folks out to a cabin in the woods, have them stumble onto an ominous book of spells, gory demonic mayhem ensues. With “Evil Dead Rise,” however, the fifth installment in the series created by Sam Raimi, director Lee Cronin set out to carve a different path. “I knew I wanted it to be family.

It’s not quite “every ‘Spider-Man’ movie on Disney+,” but it’s a start. Beginning Friday, the entire Sam Raimi-directed “Spider-Man” trilogy (“Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2” and “Spider-Man 3”) will arrive alongside Marc Webb’s first “Amazing Spider-Man” reboot attempt.

Exhibition cries for a supply of films at the box office, but a flood of titles means nothing if there isn’t any marketing money put behind it. Last weekend there were five wide releases going up against Illumination/Universal’s beast Super Mario Bros Movie. Did it even make a difference? Was a proper amount spent to get audiences in seats? Or did the studios cut their losses and only pony up so much to promote them?

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” will rule again in its third weekend at the box office. In maintaining the No. 1 spot in North America, the family film is expected to take down two newcomers, the supernatural horror sequel “Evil Dead Rise” and action-war thriller “Guy Ritchie’s the Covenant,” as well as A24’s mind-bender “Beau Is Afraid,” which is expanding nationwide. Universal and Illumination’s animated “Mario” adventure has grossed $366.3 million domestically to date. In the next few days, it will surpass “Minions: The Rise of Gru” ($369 million) as the highest-grossing animated film of the pandemic era. With $724 million globally, it already stands as the biggest movie of the year so far. Now in its third outing at the domestic box office, “Mario” is looking to bring in roughly $45 to $50 million, a massive result at this point in its theatrical run.

William Earl Lee Cronin is very particular about blood. Cronin, the Irish writer and director of “Evil Dead Rise,” the fifth feature installment in the cult horror series, lights up when discussing gore on set. “We used 6,500 liters [1,717 gallons] of blood on the movie,” he said. “That is real, sticky, cooked movie blood. We had to hire out this industrial kitchen to cook the blood and keep it fresh, be able to heat it up, because characters are covered in it. There was a lot of management of liquid in this movie. I wanted blood to be a character, so it was important we got the viscosity and look just right.”

“Infinity Pool” actress Mia Goth has joined the cast of Mahershala Ali’s “Blade,” according to an insider with knowledge of the project.Yann Demange, a French-Algerian filmmaker whose previous credits include Jack O’Connell’s “71” and Matthew McConaughey’s “White Boy Rick,” is attached to direct the vampire-killing actioner.Michael Starrbury, who has penned episodes of Netflix and Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us” and “Colin in Black and White,” wrote the latest draft of the screenplay.Assuming all goes well from here, production will begin in Atlanta in early 2023. While the film will reportedly be darker than a stereotypical Marvel romp, the extent this film will straddle the line between the safely PG-13 MCU entries and New Line Cinema’s original hard-R trilogy with Wesley Snipes remains to be seen.When Stephen Norrington’s “Blade” debuted in 1998, it was mostly sold and generally embraced (good reviews, solid buzz and $131 million worldwide on a $45 million budget) as an R-rated, martial-arts infused Snipes vehicle that just happened to be based on a Marvel comic book.

“Evil Dead Rise,” the latest in the cult classic “Evil Dead” horror franchise, doesn’t waste any time. From it’s jump right into the story of sisters Ellie and Beth (Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan, respectively) to the sheer amount of gore and brutality that ensues, “Evil Dead Rise” is relentless in its pursuit of fear, and that’s by design.

Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament took a hiatus during the pandemic as movie theaters closed for the majority of 2020-2021 and theatrical day-and-date titles on both the big screen and studios’ respective streaming platforms became more prevalent. Coming back from that brink, the studios have largely returned to their theatrical release models and the downstream monies they can bring. Not to mention their power in launching IPs around the world with big global marketing campaigns. When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses, and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that mysterious end of the equation, Deadline is repeating our Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament for 2022, using data culled by seasoned and trusted sources.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Thomas Haden Church was one of the many Spider-Man alum who returned for Marvel’s 2021 blockbuster “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Church reprised his role of Flint Marko/Sandman from Sam Raimi’s 2007 “Spider-Man 3,” but his screen-time in “No Way Home” was fairly limited when compared to fellow returning villains like Electro (Jamie Foxx), Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina). In a new interview with The DisInsider, Church said conversations are taking place about future big screen appearances for Sandman. “We had a whole story involving his his daughter, for ‘No Way Home,'” Church said about the character. “And it just ended up [cut]. There was just so much going on…Amy [Pascal] and Kevin [Feige], we all had a lot of conversations. And I would say that conversations have been had about the possibility of Sandman coming into an a future iteration of it.”

Sam Raimi has explained how he thought the title forEvil Dead was “stupid” when the legendary film was first made.In an interview with Empire, Raimi revealed that the title came from the film’s sales agent Irvin Shapiro.“The original title of the [original] movie was The Book of the Dead,” Raimi said. “But Shapiro sat Rob [Tapert], Bruce [Campbell], and I down and said: ‘We’re changing the title, boys. Advertising space in the newspaper is paid for by the inch, kid.

Willem Dafoe is talking Spider-Man.

Willem Dafoe isn’t entirely against doing another “Spider-Man” movie as the Green Goblin.

4x Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe has expressed his willingness to return to the Spider-Man multiverse again, should the right opportunity arise.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Willem Dafoe is not ruling out a third appearance as the iconic Spider-Man villain Norman Osborne/Green Goblin. The actor’s beloved role in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” remains his most recognizable performance, and he reprised Green Goblin to rave reviews in 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Dafoe told Inverse in a recent interview to promote his new thriller, “Inside,” that a third go-around with the Spider-Man villain is not out of the question. “If everything was right, sure,” Dafoe said. “I mean, that’s a great role. I liked the fact that it’s a double role both times. Twenty years ago, and fairly recently, both times [were] very different experiences, but I had a good time on both.”

pic.twitter.com/aocgJ4e3mQ“I think someone got possessed during the movie,” one of the panelists said, followed by “Keep back, keep Austin weird, right?”“There was no alcohol involved in that whatsoever,” Campbell added.“Evil Dead Rise” is a sequel/reboot to the franchise that follows Beth (Lily Sullivan), a road-weary traveler who visits her older sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). Ellie is raising three kids in a small Los Angeles apartment, and their reunion gets interrupted by a book beneath Ellie’s basement that gives rise to flesh-possessing demons. The film stands alone from Sam Raimi’s trilogy starring Bruce Campbell as Ash as well as the television series continuation “Ash vs.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Just a skosh more than a decade after Fede Alvarez’s carnage-crammed “Evil Dead” reboot jump-started the horror franchise spawned by Sam Raimi’s low-budget 1981 cult favorite, writer-director Lee Cronin has delivered his own imaginatively scary take on the “Book of the Dead” mythos with “Evil Dead Rise.” A kinda-sorta sequel, it offers incontrovertible evidence that predatory and possessive bogeymen are just as frightful when their hunting ground shifts from a cabin in a dark corner of the woods to a gone-to-seed apartment building in downtown Los Angeles.    Said building — aptly described by one holdout resident as a “condemned dump” — just happens to have been built on the site of a long-closed bank that evidently shuttered before certain mystical merchandise could be retrieved from its vault. Specifically, we’re talking about yet another Book of the Dead: an ancient tome with a binding of human skin that can serve as an entryway for savage supernatural creatures eager to infect and forage in our world. This particular edition was locked away along with some 1923-era vinyl recordings of a clergyman’s warnings about the dangers of even glancing between the covers. Trouble is, all it takes is an earthquake, and a curious adolescent living with his family several stories above the buried material, for all hell to break loose.

A post-screening Q&A for the Evil Dead Rise briefly turned into a shouting match at SXSW Wednesday evening after the film’s executive producer Bruce Campbell clashed with a heckler in the audience.

EXCLUSIVE: Lauren Kisilevsky is reuniting with Reese Witherspoon after being hired to oversee live-action family programming at Hello Sunshine.

grossed $3.5 million at the Thursday box office in January 2022. It went on to make $81.6 million in the U.S. and $137.7 million worldwide against a $25 million budget.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Adam Driver-starring sci-fi adventure film “65” has been approved for theatrical release in mainland China. It will hit cinemas on March 31, some three weeks after the film began to release in other international territories. The film is branded as a Columbia Pictures title and will be released by the Sony label in most territories. In China, however, all revenue-sharing import titles are officially handled by a state-owned enterprise. The Hollywood studio’s Chinese office theoretically operates in an advisory capacity, though in practice it is likely to be involved in marketing strategy and p&a decisions. The film has a survival-quest narrative. After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Driver) quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth some 65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive.

Julia MacCary editor Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult’s vampire horror-comedy “Renfield” will get its world premiere at the Overlook Film Festival on March 30. Hoult (“The Menu,” “About a Boy”) stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to Dracula, who is being played by Cage (“Face/Off,” “The Rock”). Chris McKay (“The Tomorrow War,” “The Lego Movie”) directed the film, and Ryan Ridley (“Rick and Morty,” “The Wastelander”) penned it. Additional cast members include Awkwafina, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brandon Scott Jones and Ben Schwartz. Lee Cronin’s “Evil Dead Rise” will close out the festival on April 2. Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland star in the film about estranged sisters reuniting, only to have flesh-possessing demons force them into a battle to survive. Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campell produced the film.

The Overlook Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, taking place in New Orleans from March 30-April 2, naming the world premiering Universal horror-comedy Renfield as its opening night film, and Warner Bros’ Evil Dead Rise as its closer.

“Cocaine Bear,” now playing in theaters courtesy of Universal Pictures. Directed by Elizabeth Banks and penned by Jimmy Warden, the not-quite-true story concerns a black bear minding her own business who stumbles upon cocaine dropped from a drug-smuggling plane.

EXCLUSIVE: Two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins will team with Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell in Locked, a remake of the Argentinian action thriller 4X4, for ZQ Entertainment and Raimi Productions. David Yarovesky is set to direct. He and Sam Raimi collaborated recently on Nightbooks. Michael Arlen Ross (Oracle) wrote the script. The original was written and directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat (Official Competition).

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline has learned that Lidya Jewett will star in The Exorcist, the first film in the rebooted trilogy, which Blumhouse, Morgan Creek, Universal and Peacock scooped up global rights to for $400M.