Director Lee Cronin Used Army Of Darkness’ Necronomicons To Help Construct Evil Dead Rise

The newest Necronomicon, which features teeth, veins, and human flesh bindings, is one nasty-looking piece of literature. The team behind “Evil Dead Rise” started work on the book as soon as pre-production started, because they knew the Necronomicon is vital for a good “Evil Dead” story. It’s also important for the book to be appropriately scary, and franchise star Bruce Campbell hyped up “Evil Dead Rise” being “all about the Necronomicon.” Cronin revealed the inspiration behind this particular iteration of the Book of the Dead:

“In one of the early meetings I had with Sam Raimi, I said, ‘You know the way in “Army Of Darkness,” there’s three [Necronomicons]? You had one, Fede had one, I’m going to take the other one.’ It gave me that platform to nudge things forward, and also to showcase that we live in a world where there is more than one copy of the Necronomicon. Those books may all have slightly different personalities — it’s not exactly the same book, necessarily, that Ash had in the cabin. But it’s very, very firmly related. It could even be more dangerous…”

“Army of Darkness” is sometimes only hinted at in the “Evil Dead” franchise canon because of rights issues, but Cronin’s reveal that the three books from that film are canon in the new film sets up the potential for all kinds of future hijinks. A sequel to “Evil Dead Rise” could even feature multiple books, maybe crossing over with the Starz series or the 2013 film, introducing Beth to Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) and Pablo (Ray Santiago) or even Mia, if they could convince Levy to come back.