Director Lee Cronin Explains Why 'EVIL DEAD RISE' Doesn't Tie Into ASH Vs. EVIL DEAD Mythos

The world that is Evil Dead is very dense. From movies, to TV, to comics and beyond, the franchise has a whole lot of history behind it and with Evil Dead Rise coming to theaters this Friday (April 21st) it begs the question, “Why aren’t all the films and even TV show tied into each other? Well, director Lee Cronin of Evil Dead Rise has an answer that makes a lot of sense to us.

Our friends over at Comicbook.com got to chat with the director about why at least ASH Vs. Evil Dead wasn’t used as a tie in since it’s the most recent member of the franchise to reach the masses.

"Giving you a really candid answer, I intentionally didn't pay any heed to the television series, even though I'm a big fan of it and a big fan of everything," Cronin confirmed with ComicBook.com. "I really was just looking at the canon within the movies, that's where my focus was. From that point of view, it's not impossible equally that the story in Ash vs. Evil Dead is taking place somewhere else without an awareness in terms of my story. For me, it's actually quite simple, and I went to Sam Raimi and said, 'There's three books as shown in Army of Darkness. You've used one book, [Evil Dead 2013 director] Fede [Álvarez] used one book. I'm going to take the third book and open up that other avenue.' Sam really liked that idea because at least it drew a line between the existence of this third book and its appearance in this story in Evil Dead Rise back in time. So there is that connection there."

He continued, "I look at it in terms of Sam's movies, you've got 1 and 2 followed by 3, which is back in time but on that same stretch of timeline. Then you jump forward to 10 years ago, you've got Fede's movie and then you jump another 10 years forward and you've got this movie. So to me, they're in a straight line, and it's referenced in the movie by the priest, Littleton, on the vinyl and his awareness that they found one of the three Books of the Dead. They're aware of the lore, but this particular book, we don't know where it's appeared in the past and it's certainly been locked away for many, many years until this point in time when it appears post-earthquake and when Danny uncovers it. So to me, it's happening not alongside, it's just happening in the here and now, but everything that's happened before could also have happened and taken place."

In regards to the events of that storyline, Cronin expressed his reason for avoiding it by noting, "For a very simple reason, just a really basic boring thing. When TV runs for three seasons, everything goes and everything's poured in there, so I needed to more look at it inside the close narrative canon of the movies."

Will we ever see a film that brings all three books back together as they were in Army Of Darkness? One can only hope and pray to the powers that be (Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell) that we eventually will.

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