Robert Tapert Reveals ‘Evil Dead Wrath’ Takes Place in 1972
While Evil Dead Burn is still on deck for this summer, producer Robert Tapert has already started pulling the curtain back on the next movie in the franchise, Evil Dead Wrath.
And it sounds like Francis Galluppi is taking the series somewhere completely different.
Speaking this past April at Michigan State University, Tapert revealed that Evil Dead Wrath is a period piece set before the events of the original The Evil Dead. In other words, unless the mythology gets twisted in some unexpected way, this is essentially an Evil Dead prequel.
“Evil Dead Wrath. This is yet another great departure. It predates everything. It takes place in 1972,” Tapert said.
That alone is massive. The original The Evil Dead was released in 1981, with Sam Raimi’s cabin-set horror unleashing the Book of the Dead on Ash and his friends. Wrath going back to 1972 means Galluppi’s film is reaching into an earlier corner of the mythology, before Ash, before the events we know, and potentially before the franchise’s most famous encounter with the Deadites.
Tapert also teased that the film is being designed to look and feel like something from that era.
“It will feel like a 1972 movie because the director and his DP want to imitate the film’s look and feel of something that’s called Ektachrome 100, which was a film stock. Still available, but a film stock. A lot of movies [were] shot on that then. And so it’s very warm, very tungsten.”
That is especially interesting coming from Galluppi, whose The Last Stop in Yuma County already showed a very precise command of throwback tension, controlled compositions, and pressure-cooker storytelling. Tapert directly contrasted Galluppi’s approach with Vaniček’s Burn, describing two totally different filmmakers operating inside the same universe.
“So, but once again, now, two entirely different filmmakers, one that shoots everything on a 110-millimeter lens handheld, always moving, always shaking, and the other one is very Tarantino-esque, very deliberate. He made a movie, not a horror movie, that I liked a great deal called Last Stop in Yuma County. It’s worth looking up.”
The other surprise is that Wrath may be bringing a coming-of-age angle into the franchise.
“That one, unlike Burn, has a lot of coming-of-age sexual hijinks in it, which people at the universe is not really known for, but this one does. And it goes there, I think.”
That is not exactly familiar Evil Dead territory, which is probably the point. Burn sounds like domestic trauma and demonic brutality. Wrath sounds like 1972, period texture, sexual chaos, and something more dangerous than the franchise has usually attempted.
Evil Dead Wrath is currently set for theatrical release on April 7, 2028.
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