Evil Dead Rise director and writer Lee Cronin has addressed whether the new movie is connected to the previous films in the franchise.
Speaking to Empire, Cronin discussed the film's Necronomicon and how it could connect the film to the ones that have come before.
This time, the book of text that will unleash the havoc is scarier than ever, with veins, teeth and some truly terrifying illustrations inside.
Related: First look at new Evil Dead movie arrives ahead of 2023 release
Cronin explained that work started on the book as pre-production began and it took three months in total to create.
"It's all completely hand-made, hand-drawn. It's got a different visual style to what you've seen before internally," he said. "I even brought in little hints of Celtic influences and different things to give it a hell of a lot of personality."
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Cronin went on to say the book was "the bastard cousin of the other books, and they're the bastard cousin of this", leading to the question of whether the new movie is set in the same world as the original 1981 film or the 2013 remake, or somewhere completely different.
"There are connections to the past, lines are drawn," the director teased. "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 [Álvarez, director of the 2013 remake] 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…"
Evil Dead Rise dropped its first trailer earlier this week, filled with all the gore you'd expect from the horror franchise.
The new movie follows Beth (Lily Sullivan) whose overdue visit to her older sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) is interrupted by the discovery of a mysterious book – wonder what that could be – which gives rise to our favourite flesh-possession demons, the Deadites.
Alongside Sutherland, the film also stars Morgan Davies, Nell Fisher, Jayden Daniels, Gabrielle Echols, Billy Reynolds-McCarthy and Tai Wano. Executive producing is franchise creator Raimi alongside Bruce Campbell, who played Ash Williams in the original films.
Evil Dead Rise is released in cinemas on April 21, 2023.
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After graduating with a degree in history from Queen Mary University, London, she studied journalism at Birkbeck University.
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