'Evil Dead' director reveals sequel plans

The Evil Dead reboot doesn’t hit theaters until April 5, but director Fede Alvarez says a sequel is already in the works.

During a Q&A session after the film’s Austin premiere, Alvarez told the audience “we’ve already started writing Evil Dead 2.”

The film screened to a wildly enthusiastic crowd that Paramount Theatre on the opening night of the South by Southwest festival. Sony is boldly marketing the film as “The Most Terrifying Movie You Will Ever Experience.” That might be a bit of stretch, but it’s definitely got a shot at being one of the goriest and bloodiest. Alvarez says the production went through two trucks full of 50,000 gallons of fake blood to accomplish the film’s splatter-rific climax and multiple dismemberment scenes.

Once again, a group of young people (this time played by Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Jessica Lucas, Lou Taylor Pucci and Elizabeth Blackmore) stay in a cabin in the woods and accidentally unleash a demonic force that possess its victims. The tone is much closer to the original straight-faced 1981 Evil Dead rather than its two horror-comic sequels. Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert are producers on the project.

“Somebody said, ‘Don’t you miss the charm of the first one?'” said Campbell, who starred in the original Evil Dead trilogy. “The charm of having no money. The charm of Rob and I making $35 a week in expenses which we never collected because we didn’t have the money. We went to buy gum one day at 7-11. Nobody had any money to buy gum.”

For fans who wait until the very end of the film’s credits, Campbell makes a quickie surprise appearance. “Everybody wants a cameo,” mock-griped the actor. “There’s your f–king cameo!”