EVIL DEAD: Behind the Scenes of the Remake

• Email

Details

Last Updated: Monday, 07 May 2018 13:16

Written by Lupe Haas

PRODUCTION NOTES

A remote cabin in the woods becomes a blood-soaked chamber of horrors when a group of 20-something friends unwittingly awakens an ancient demon in EVIL DEAD, the highly anticipated reboot of Sam Raimi’s 1981 cult-hit horror film The EVIL DEAD. Featuring a fresh young cast, EVIL DEAD is a bone-chilling film that combines all the raw excitement and gleeful gore of the acclaimed original with a series of shocking new twists.

Mia (Jane Levy), a young woman whose life has been marred by loss and addiction, asks her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez), his girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) and their childhood friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) to join her at the family’s rustic cabin to help her overcome her demons. Once there, she ceremoniously destroys the last of her stash and swears off drugs for good in front of her friends.

Inside, they are shocked to discover that the abandoned cabin has been broken into. The cellar has been transformed into a grotesque altar surrounded by dozens of mummified animals. Eric becomes fascinated with an ancient book he discovers there. In thrall to its mysterious contents, he reads aloud from it, never suspecting the terrifying consequences he is about to unleash.

As Mia’s withdrawals worsen, she begins to unravel and attempts to flee, but is turned back by a frightening vision. At the cabin, her behavior becomes so violent that her friends are forced to restrain her. Trapped by a dangerous storm raging outside, they begin to turn on each other one by one. As the brutality of their attacks increases, David is faced with an unimaginable choice.  Watch trailer.

EVIL DEAD stars Jane Levy (“Suburgatory”), Shiloh Fernandez (Red Riding Hood), Lou Taylor Pucci (Carriers), Jessica Lucas (Cloverfield) and Elizabeth Blackmore (Legend of the Seeker).

Fede Alvarez makes his feature film-directing debut with a screenplay written by Alvarez, and Rodo Sayagues. Producers are Rob Tapert (30 Days of Night), Sam Raimi (Spider-Man franchise), and Bruce Campbell (who starred in and co-produced the first film).

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

In 1981 The EVIL DEAD opened in theaters and drive-ins around the world, terrorizing filmgoers, polarizing audiences and launching the careers of director Sam Raimi, producer Rob Tapert and actor Bruce Campbell.

The story of five young friends who go to a remote cabin in the woods to party and accidentally release unspeakable evil forces, The EVIL DEAD surprised even its creators by becoming a cult classic and a right-of-passage into the horror-movie experience for millions of fans.

The EVIL DEAD’s fanatical audience has continued to grow over the more than 30 years since three novices with a shoestring budget created what is still considered one of the scariest movies of all time. Raimi, Tapert and Campbell have been debating a remake for a number of years. “When we were making The EVIL DEAD, it was a struggle just to get to the next day,” says Tapert. “We never dreamed it was going to be a successful franchise, with two more chapters.”

The new film, EVIL DEAD, is a bold reimagining of one of the most original and successful horror movies ever made. With Raimi, Tapert and Campbell producing, EVIL DEAD is on track to terrorize a new generation of filmgoers with a combination of 21st-century technology and classic hardcore horror elements.

Raimi was the first to come around to the idea of a fourth film. “I really felt it was great ghost story that deserved to be told again on the big screen, but with high quality visuals and great acoustic treatment this time,” he says. “We had to shoot the first movie in 16 millimeter. The sound was mono because we couldn’t afford stereo, let alone 5.1 surround sound. There were probably only sixty prints made, so it was released in very few theaters. It only showed in certain markets on the big screen because it was unrated. So almost everyone who has seen it viewed it on either videotape or DVD. Even when it has been seen on a big screen, it was with compromised picture and sound.”

Campbell, on the other hand, was the least inclined to revisit the material. “Fans saw Freddy and Jason and all their other favorite horror characters making movie after movie,” says Campbell. “There was demand for another film. But how many years am I going to strap on a chainsaw and run around without my shirt on? There’s statute of limitations for that.”

Raimi also felt that a reboot of the original would be a great vehicle for a young filmmaker to tackle. “It’s like a campfire ghost story that is retold every generation and it improves with age.”

The storyteller in this case is director Fede Alvarez. “He’s a great filmmaker,” says Raimi. “I wanted him to be the guy to tell my ghost story to a new generation, with pristine sound and picture, on the big screen, seen for the first time as it was always meant to be.”

Alvarez burst onto the filmmaking scene with his 2010 short film, Panic Attack, A hugely inventive five-minute thriller featuring an attack on Uruguayan capital Montevideo by giant robots, Panic Attack garnered more than 7 million hits (and counting) on YouTube, capturing the attention of the film industry in an instant.

Raimi and Tapert were among the many fans of Alvarez’s viral short film. They quickly set up a deal for him to develop it as a feature film at Ghost House Pictures, a joint venture with Nathan Kahane and Joe Drake dedicated to the horror-thriller genre.

“But as often happens, that project stalled,” Tapert says. “Sam had become a big proponent of Fede and suggested involving him in EVIL DEAD. Fede really wanted to write it with his partner Rodo Sayagues as well, so he came in with a full pitch. He showed us that we didn’t need to keep Bruce’s character in the movie. For Bruce, that allowed him to see it as a new project and it finally began to pick up momentum.”

Alvarez and Sayagues presented the partners with a startling new take on The EVIL DEAD that remained true to the essence, while introducing new characters and making subtle changes to the plot. “Bruce, Rob and Sam recognized a kindred spirit at the pitch,” says executive producer J. R. Young. “Fede and Rodo understood what goes into making an EVIL DEAD movie, and were able to make that their own.”

The writer-director says his primary goal was always to create the scariest movie possible. “The movie that I pitched was for me the movie that I saw when I was twelve and saw The EVIL DEAD for the first time. It didn’t look like anything I had seen before and it was set in such a crazy universe. That was the tone I wanted to recreate and that’s the idea that we all agreed upon, right away.

“We were committed to one thing: making sure that we kept everything that is necessary and timeless about the original and updated the rest,” Alvarez says. “We kept the idea of a group of best friends in what is meant to be a safe place. Once there, they try to kill each other. For me, that is a very scary feeling, worse than strangers menacing you in a zombie movie. Your best friends are turning against you one by one. The walls are closing in. That is part of the magic of the originals. It has always stayed with me.”

Deciding which elements to update was the toughest part of the job, he says. He made Mia, a young woman trying to overcome her addiction, the central character. “She’s battling with withdrawal and her friends are trying to help,” explains Alvarez. “In the original, the kids are there to smoke pot and drink alcohol, which made sense because those characters were a little younger. We needed another reason to go to that cabin. I think this a strong concept that is relevant. It’s not really about the drugs, but anything that you’re trying to leave behind. And that is the whole theme of the movie. It’s one thing to know the path, and another to walk down it. All the characters are struggling with that.”

Tapert was impressed by how close the basic concept was to the original EVIL DEAD movie, without slavishly recreating the plot. “The storyline is different, but ultimately, somebody’s going to open the book, and bad things are going to happen.

“Fede is very passionate about his work,” Tapert adds. “The better we got to know him, the more sure we were that he was right for the job. He knows what’s important. He doesn’t have exactly any of our takes on it, so he brought something fresh and new.”

EVIL DEAD marks Fede Alvarez’s feature directing debut. “But we knew he was the guy for a number of reasons,” says Young. “He has The EVIL DEAD in his veins. He knows the responsibility we have to fans to deliver something special. Panic Attack proved that Fede could work with limited resources to make something really special. When I look back at what Sam and Rob and Bruce did when they made the first film, it came from the same place that Fede was working from: a desire to make something outrageous and scary for the audience.”

The collaboration was a first-time filmmaker’s dream come true. He was allowed enormous freedom to create his own, original project, but he had the combined experiences of Raimi, Tapert and Campbell to fall back on. “They always tried to back me up and they brought their own crazy point of view,” Alvarez says.

The original team knew they needed to take a step back from the property that had been theirs for over thirty years, in order to allow Alvarez to make the best movie he was capable of making. “We helped, but it was a bit like a parent having to let go of their child’s bike as they ride off,” says Tapert. “No matter how much advice is available, we all have to experience things ourselves.”

Raimi worked closely with Alvarez on developing the script, while giving the director the space to make the film his own. “For instance, I liked his treatment and his screenplay, but I gave him simple notes on both. We never insisted on anything because we knew we had a great writer and a great filmmaker. We just offered our suggestions. Sometimes he took the notes, sometimes he didn’t, but every time he did a draft, the screenplay got better and better.”
“The same is true with the cut of the picture,” Raimi continues. “There were certain things we objected to. Sometimes he listened to us, sometimes he didn’t. Slowly but surely, I ceded artistic control to him, because I so respect his vision.”  

“Our biggest gift to Fede was not to micromanage him,” agrees Campbell. “We focused on the things that we want to keep true to the movie series. The rest is all Fede.”

When the remake was announced, there was some concern among the fan community, which the filmmakers were extremely sensitive to. “The fans are really important,” Raimi says. “The original picture only survived because a dedicated group of individuals found it on video and began to tell their friends. They allowed us to make two sequels. In fact, they allowed us to make this movie, some 30 years later. So the fans are everything and I think this picture will give them what they seek in spades.”

But, says Tapert, the new film isn’t a simple remake, it’s a complete re-imagining. “Five kids still go to a cabin in the woods and one by one become possessed. But there are a lot of twists and turns that make this very different from the original. It’s a whole different roller coaster.”  

For his part, Alvarez seems immune to the pressure of living up to the original. “The biggest pressure for me was trying to make the best movie possible,” he says. “Yes, we’re remaking a classic, but I don’t see that it matters what you do with a new movie. The older movie is always there. It’s not going to be better or worse because a new one exists. The three previous EVIL DEAD movies will be there for fans to watch. This is just a new chapter. We’re not overwriting the original at all—we’re just looking at it from a different point of view.”

Alvarez says that remakes hold a special appeal to him because some of his favorite childhood favorites, including The Thing and The Fly, were based on earlier films. “But I had never heard of the originals. It’s been more than 30 years since the original EVIL DEAD and I think it’s an appropriate time to reimagine it for a whole new audience. And they’re not going to get anything watered down. This is balls-to-the-wall horror.”

The EVIL DEAD created enormous controversy when it was first shown. The distributor chose to release the film without a rating, anticipating that its graphic violence would earn it an X-rating, limiting its theatrical exposure. Tapert notes that while the original plays uncut on television today, in 1981, audiences hadn’t seen anything quite like it.

“To make a great horror film is a huge endeavor,” the producer says. “In Sam’s words, it’s using a butterfly net to capture the human spirit. You have to want to scare the audience out of their wits. You need to have the ability to surprise the audience. While they’re looking this way, you come at them from that way. You don’t necessarily need A-level stars or the best equipment, but you have to have a desire to manipulate and lead the audience, without letting them feel like they’re being led or manipulated, through 90 minutes of terror.”

And to make a really great, groundbreaking horror film that lives up to its legacy, Tapert says, they had to go in a direction that feels fresh and new. “The audience wants to feel like this is something they haven’t seen before. The genre is always evolving and what you saw as a kid is no longer that scary.

“I remember a headline in the Christian Science Monitor: Exactly The Kind Of Movie We Do Not Need,” he adds, referring to the original film. “We hope this movie hits the audience just as hard. This movie will deliver what my son wants to see in a horror movie and he’s seen pretty much everything. For those that want to go on this ride, we’re going to provide everything that they hoped for.”

“EVIL DEAD is the ultimate experience in terror,” says Young. “It is a ticket to the outrageous. Today’s audience has seen a lot, so we’ve had to push the limits even further. We tried our best to deliver something that will stand on its own legs. The original will always be there, it was born of a special time and place with some really innovative creators. We wanted to respect that and create something that is wholly new for the audience.”
Raimi guarantees there will also be a lot of surprises in the new film “It’s got a whole new storyline,” he says. “The situation’s similar, but the ways in which the kids are possessed and their interactions are all different. It delivers great new visuals and scares for the audience.”

Campbell describes the new film with one simple word. “Relentless. Fede has done everything he could story-wise to slowly suck you into a vortex that you just can’t get out of. It grips you and it doesn’t let you go.

“This isn’t a jokey little horror movie,” he warns. “This is a full-on, strap-yourself-in sort of ride. It gets more and more outrageous as it goes. It’s high-octane fun. And kids: if you find a book in a cabin in the woods, just turn around and drive away.”

Adds Raimi, “It’s the ultimate experience in grueling terror. And I dare you to see it.”

LIFE AFTER ASH

Bruce Campbell had just one piece of advice when it came time to cast EVIL DEAD. “I said, this time we’ve got to get better actors,” he recalls. “When we made the first movie, we were completely inexperienced. I would now call the dialogue poor, but back then, we didn’t know the difference. We just said it with great earnestness and audiences loved it.”
Finding a talented young cast wasn’t difficult given the reputation the film had built over the years. “So many actors wanted to work with us,” says Tapert. “With many horror films, you don’t get the cream of the crop coming in. We got to cherry pick some of the best young actors Hollywood has to offer.”

Acting talent wasn’t the sole criteria during casting, though. The production was shaping up to be especially demanding. “In addition to the prosthetics and makeup, I wanted to scare them for real and get that on the screen,” says Alvarez. “And without exception, our cast went to it with no reservations. No one ever said, I would prefer not to do this or that, and I am really grateful to them for that.”

No one knows the challenges better than Jane Levy, who plays Mia. “We all had this mental image of Mia,” says Tapert. “Jane was not in that mold, but she gave a dynamic audition. Sam, Bruce and I agreed pretty much instantly that she was the one—and she proved herself to be up to the challenge. It is a really demanding part, but she’s feisty and I think she’s brought a huge amount of energy and commitment to it. She actually enjoyed being a monster, which is helpful if you’re in a horror movie like this one.”

“Jane was a godsend,” agrees Young. “She is such an exciting actress to watch. Mia goes through extraordinary punishment and Jane jumped in feet first. Whether it was a vulnerable dramatic scene or an outrageous horror scene, she was unafraid.”

Playing a demonically possessed junkie was a welcome change of pace for Levy, who stars in the ABC sitcom, “Suburgatory.” “She’s a great sport who never said no to anything,” Alvarez says. “In fact, she was always asking for more. Whatever happened to the character, she was ready to do another take. She is also the sweetest girl, which is crucial for the story. You see her vulnerability and you root for her right away. But when she turns mean, she’s the scariest person ever.”

Following up her television show with a hardcore horror film offered the actress just the kind of challenge she was looking for. “I was able to try so many different things in this role,” she says. “I’m a recovering drug addict and I’m possessed. It gave me the opportunity to go somewhere new. Plus, the people behind this are extremely talented, which made me eager to do it. I also thought going to New Zealand to work sounded romantic. Little did I know...”

Levy’s character is the youngest of the group. “She is David’s little sister and almost like a little sister to Eric and Olivia,” the actress says. “They grew up together and Mia’s always needed a little bit of parenting. David wasn’t really good at being that person. She’s trying to fix what’s broken in their relationship, as well as in herself. Until she goes out in the woods and sees that ominous figure, she’s trying to keep it together. She’s 100-percent committed to going through the physical pain and paranoia of withdrawal. But when she sees the figure, she realizes this place isn’t safe, only no one listens to her.”  

The demands of the part tested the actress’ discipline. Hours in the makeup chair before and after shooting added to an already stressful day on the set. “I went to bed at 8:30 every night,” she says. “I ate only vegetables and fruit, stayed in on the weekends. I did yoga and breath work, so that I was able to give as much as I could. Otherwise I don’t think I would have been able to do this job.”

But surprisingly, it was playing Mia at the beginning of the movie, before she is possessed, that was in some ways the most difficult part of the job. “That was actually more painful,” Levy says. “As a demon, I could be whatever I wanted. It’s very animalistic and I was given a lot of freedom to explore. I was destroying people, torturing people. In a weird way, it was fun to be able to do that.”

Although she calls herself “a huge scaredy cat,” Levy has become intrigued by the horror genre after this experience. “It’s rich as hell, because it’s based on primal fear. This film is a supernatural movie, with lots of character development and great story telling. The horror starts right away and it doesn’t let go. It’s extreme. When I was reading the script, I thought ‘Oh my God, blood rain?’ And then I thought, yeah, cool, bring it on!”

Mia’s brother and their friends are still living in the “real” world when her transformation takes place. David is simply unable to believe what is happening, even though Mia tries to tell him. “None of us would be able to,” says Alvarez. “The scene between the two of them sums up the whole premise of the movie in a way.”

Shiloh Fernandez plays David, a role he almost declined to audition for—but not because he didn’t want it. “I was scheduled to audition when my agent forwarded me these emails between Fede and his agent,” says the actor. “They said we want to hire Shiloh Fernandez, but I hadn’t yet auditioned. And I said, I’m not going to go to this audition. There’s nothing I could do except blow my chances.”

But Fernandez’ agent convinced him to keep his appointment and he was quickly cast as David, the survivor of a difficult childhood. “Their mom was mentally ill,” says Fernandez. “He protected his little sister as best he could until he turned 18 and then he left. He couldn’t be part of it any longer.”

The relationship between David and his sister and their friends is part of what drew Fernandez into the script. “There was a lot to explore,” he says. “I’d never done a film like this before, but I enjoyed finding the truth within the horror.”  

While still in Los Angeles, the actor spent time with Alvarez ironing out some of the finer points of his character. “Because he is the writer as well, Fede was able to explain exactly what he wanted,” says Fernandez. “He is a filmmaker with a real cinematic eye. It was really neat to watch his vision unfold. On the set, he paid complete attention to what each of us was doing and came back with direction for us all.”

The experience of making EVIL DEAD revealed a new side of filming for Fernandez. “The focus has been on making the best movie possible,” says Fernandez. “Rob and Sam have been very supportive of Fede and his original vision. They also want to honor the fans and please them—and I’m glad none of that is up to me.”

All hell breaks loose in the cabin in the woods as a result of a bizarre text found in the cellar by Eric, a schoolteacher and longtime friend of Mia and David. When Eric, played by Lou Taylor Pucci, reads aloud from his discovery, he is unwittingly calling a demon out of its netherworld lair to unleash chaos on the world.

“Eric is gripped by a strange, perhaps otherworldly attraction to the book,” says Young. “It’s something that’s never explicitly laid out in the story, but through Lou’s performance and Fede’s direction, we get a sense that there’s something stronger going on than just a natural curiosity.”

For Pucci, a fan of the original movie, the idea of participating in a new chapter of a classic franchise was simply irresistible. “I’m going to be in EVIL DEAD!” he enthuses. “It is the sickest, scariest film I’ve ever seen! I was beyond excited.”

But he had to get through an awkward audition first. “I went to the casting and I felt terrible afterwards,” he recalls. “For the audition scene, I was supposed to be behind a door, going crazy. Doing it with no real prep or rehearsal, I felt like an idiot, yelling and screaming at nothing. I was shocked when I got a callback a week later. When they told me Bruce Campbell was going to be there, I was excited to meet him, but I still didn’t hold out much hope of getting the part.”

After seeing the original at least 15 times himself, Pucci hopes others will appreciate the care and creativity that has gone into updating the story. “This movie is even scarier,” he says. “I think it’s because Fede makes you care about the characters. They can’t get away and even nature is against them. For the people seeing it for the first time, it’s going to be really cool to get into that part and then be grossed out. The fans will expect all the nastiness, but they’ll get drawn in all over again by the characters.”

Raimi and Tapert knew Jessica Lucas, who plays Olivia, because they had worked together on the 2009 supernatural thriller, Drag Me to Hell. “We just love her,” says Tapert. “She brings a great gravitas to her part. She was a real trooper about the enormous amount of action and the make-up and appliances she had to go through.”

Olivia grew up in Flint, Michigan, and was close to Mia, David and Eric, until David left. “Olivia is the catalyst for this trip,” explains Lucas. “She’s a nurse and she’s determined to get her friend get through this horrible experience. She is the most skeptical about the supernatural.”

When Lucas heard that Raimi was interested in making a new EVIL DEAD movie, she was immediately interested. “The franchise has such a cult following,” she says. “When I read the script, it was really scary and wild. When you are doing a horror film that has supernatural elements, everything is a bit heightened and that’s fun to play. There are no boundaries for what you can do.”

To help the actors conceptualize the possession scenes, Alvarez brought in a choreographer to explore the physicality. “We were trying to come up with small simple movements that caught the eye because they are unusual,” says Alvarez. “Even something like a little twitch reads powerfully on camera.”

“It was really helpful.” Lucas says. “We all wanted to maintain some individual flair, but still make it consistent. We were doing crazy stuff—acting like we had poison in our bodies, vibrating or pretending the floor was uneven. It was a really cool process.”

The time spent rehearsing together also helped the actors build a real bond that reflects the history between their characters, she says. “It created a really safe environment to make the best movie possible, because we could all lean on each other for support.”

Lucas believes The EVIL DEAD fans will embrace this new incarnation. “I hope they appreciate that we are trying to do something different. With a movie like this, I think people want to be scared as much as possible. EVIL DEAD is very in your face. Once the action starts, it just keeps coming and coming. If you’re a horror fan, there’s no way you can’t enjoy that. It’s intense, scary, horrifying and fun. Basically, it’s everything you’d ever want in a horror film.”

Elizabeth Blackmore, who plays Natalie, was the first to audition for the role. “We thought, she’s great, let’s just keep a pin in her,” says Tapert. “But the more people we saw, the more we came back to Elizabeth. She was pushed to her limits, but she never lost sight of the character or the story. She committed to the physical pain that this kind of movie forces on the actors with full make-up and complicated appliances and very meticulous, technical acting while covered in goo, unable to see properly.”

Natalie is David’s girlfriend and new to the group. “She’s open and eager to impress,” says Blackmore. “Natalie’s like the audience. She’s an outsider just meeting these people.”

Blackmore’s first reading of the script was at home alone. “It was getting dark outside and I was getting really worked up,” she remembers. “I had to go and turn on all the lights and sit there for a moment before finishing it, because it scared me so. I knew immediately it was something I really wanted to do.”

The strong roots in real life add to the tension, she believes. “Fede came up with a clever, smart and reality-based idea. There are a lot of character relationships that are easy to feel connected to it. I had never done horror before, so it was really interesting to try and figure out how it worked. It’s kind of like being on a ride. You don’t know what’s coming next, which takes you somewhere bigger than just your life. The supernatural elements take you out of mundane dramas of the day-to-day.”

Keeping the tenuous but critical connection to real life helped the actors maintain their individuality after they had become “Deadites,” as the filmmakers call the possessed. “The Deadite characters are not like zombies,” Blackmore says. “It’s very different. You have to balance the humanity of the character with a demonic thing, but you’re still playing the person trapped inside. They’re fully aware of what they’re doing, but they can’t help themselves. It’s so scary to watch someone who’s completely out of control but still alive in there.”

An added challenge was the great degree to which the filmmakers depended on practical special effects, rather than CGI, she says. “It could be incredibly technical dealing with rigs and prosthetics when you’re trying to be this demonically possessed, spontaneous creature. We were warned that it would be hard and that we would want to rip off the prosthetics and cry. It was true; I felt an enormous sense of achievement in the end.”

The difficulties only added to the supportive atmosphere on the set, from J. R. Young’s point of view. “This is a very exciting, young, fresh cast,” he says. “They all came wanting to do something outrageous and cool that will give the audience something that they don’t expect. To see them together, you’d think they’d known each other forever. This was a grueling shoot. They spent a lot of nights covered in blood out in the cold and the rain. I often saw an actor on set doing a really difficult sequence, and the others, who could have been home in bed, were standing by cheering and rooting. To have that support from the cast was invaluable.”

JUST A CABIN IN THE WOODS

Fede Alvarez’s daring reconception of EVIL DEAD was based on recreating some iconic visual elements of the original and amping up the fear factor with the best new technology available. The success of his plan depended heavily on meticulous coordination among the crafts departments of the film, especially since he had made an unusual and demanding choice. In keeping with the spirit of the 1981 classic, Alvarez was determined to use as many practical effects, or “gags,” as possible, eschewing CGI effects wherever he could.

Auckland, New Zealand, was selected as the location based on Tapert and Raimi’s extensive experiences shooting there. “We wanted to give Fede everything he needed and we thought we could do that best in New Zealand,” says Campbell. “They have a really good, solid crew of people that take the work seriously.”

The decision made it possible for the filmmakers to bring in craftspeople and artisans with whom they had worked for more than a decade. “A lot of people really wanted to work on this because they loved The EVIL DEAD,” says Tapert. “They are all about my age and so joyous about blood and guts and scares and gags. It was an incredibly positive experience.”

The preparations began with production designer Rob Gillies, who was responsible for creating a unique look for the film that paid homage to the original visuals. “Fede had a single-minded and clear intention of what he wanted to do,” says the designer. “We just aided and abetted his vision. We kept things simple, working from a really restricted palette, so the background stays in the background and then things are added for emphasis, with blood being the thing that we really wanted to accent.”

Alvarez shot as little of the film as possible on a soundstage. “We wanted a real cabin in the woods,” he says. “For the actors, it’s helpful be in the place for real, to look around and see the woods. That’s something we really committed to from the beginning.”  

The director, along with Young, Gillies and Tapert, scouted locations in the forest outside Auckland before landing on the ideal spot. “It was very important to recreate the feeling of the EVIL DEAD cabin,” says Young. “We found a really exciting, scary clearing to set it in and around. There’s a certain texture to the trees that creates that frightening atmosphere.”

Gillies’ cabin effectively retains the look of the original and tweaks it slightly. “We invented a backstory for the cabin,” he says. “It was built in the ‘20s. Its heyday was maybe in the ‘50s and then it went downhill big time. Mia and David spent time there as children with their mother and they had good times there. There are still a few traces of those good days, like old photos curling on the wall.”

To achieve the effect they wanted, the design team had to build the cabin from scratch. “We also needed to build a duplicate on a soundstage because the heavy prosthetics were more suited to working in the studio,” says Gillies. “The challenge for me was to duplicate it in its dereliction, even though we were building it new. We flat-packed one, took that out to the woods, and re-erected it out there. We were able to shoot a huge percentage of the movie outside on location.”

The soundstage replica had to be flexible enough to accommodate Alvarez’ ambitious plans for his cameras. “The cabin is a two-part set, ground floor and basement,” says Gillies. “At the end of the basement is a door and you drop a few feet which gives us more potential for horror. It’s full of dead cats and feels like the epicenter of evil, if you like, because that’s where the Book is discovered. In the studio, we were able to actually lift the set up, so the basement was at ground level at times. The walls were all removable to accommodate the cameras.”

In addition to the cabin, Gillies was charged with recreating another iconic element of the franchise: The Book of the Dead. “The book was the seed from which The EVIL DEAD exploded,” says Tapert. “The first movie was originally entitled The Book of the Dead after something Sam read about in an ancient history class. But our sales agent said it was a terrible title, because books weren’t going to scare an audience. He made a bunch of equally bad suggestions and The EVIL DEAD was the one we could live with. I guess the rest is history.”

After proposing several ideas for the book’s design, Gillies arrived at a fairly simple, straightforward version. “Except it’s bound in human flesh and sealed with barbed wire,” says the designer. “We decided that was scary enough. We also needed to create content, because the pages give Eric the information he needs to figure out that the demons are on the prowl. We decided it was written hundreds of years ago. It looks like a 12th century scribe made some notes, and then in the 14th century someone else added some notes in another language. It passes through many hands over the centuries, all of them adding and adjusting. The writing gets crazier and more colorful, and that is how it is when Eric opens it.”

Alvarez surprised the filmmakers with his insistence on in-camera effects, believing that would retain the authenticity and immediacy he wanted for the movie. “This is such a visceral and simple story,” says the director. “It’s grounded by five people in a cabin, which everyone understands right away. Because that’s so simple, I didn’t want to bring CGI to the story.

“The effects are about taking real elements and putting them together in a new way to create something surprising,” he continues. “Too much CGI would take you out of the moment. I work with CGI in my business in Uruguay and even the best effects can sometimes be noticeable.”

When CGI couldn’t be avoided, visual effects supervisor George Ritchie was called in to smooth out rough edges. “Everybody’s seen the fancy eye candy, so it was really nice to work on something where we added value rather than trying to create the basics,” Ritchie says. “I don’t like to see gratuitous computer-generated imagery. It’s far too broadly used these days and I prefer a lighter touch. It’s a real privilege to be able to do something where if I do my job properly no one will know I’ve done it.”

From the storyboard stage through shooting, the filmmakers were constantly asking themselves asked how much could be captured in-camera. “It makes it all feel seamless and tied together,” says Young. “Every department made a huge contribution. It’s exhilarating to realize those crazy, outrageous moments with all the different visuals brought together by the team.”

Many of the gags depended on close coordination between Roger Murray, the makeup effects designer who created the elaborate prosthetics used in the movie, and the make-up team, headed by Jane O’Kane. “I’ve worked with them both for many years,” says Tapert. “In the past, Jane always wanted to put in as much blood as possible; this was her chance to really let the blood rain.

“Roger’s whole professional life has been leading up to this,” continues the producer. “He’s been creating props and special make-up appliances for years, but he’s never done a movie that utilized his entire team and their skills like this. The business has evolved away from that with CGI. Going back to doing it this way gave a great team of artisans a chance to shine.”

Having worked on many projects where CGI was used extensively, Tapert says he appreciates the difference. “When heads and arms get chopped off via CGI, there’s a certain operatic beauty to it. CGI lends itself to creating ‘pleasing’ images, whereas someone slowly sawing their arm off and squirting blood everywhere has the visceral quality that makes it seem like you can really see things ripping.”

Murray, who grew up watching horror films, still remembers seeing The EVIL DEAD for the first time when he was 15. “It was interesting going back and seeing it again, then reading the new script,” he says “The new story line is a lot more realistic and approaches the characters differently, which makes it is a lot darker. Fede is a real special effects nut, so he wanted to get everything in-camera. It was great to work with someone with his background.”

As movie effects become more sophisticated, it gets harder and harder to scare people, observes Murray. “People are exposed to a lot more horror and have become desensitized to it. Deciding what to show and what to suggest has become even more important. I think we’ve made something truly scary here.”

All the actors go through an extensive and makeup-heavy transition as they metamorphose into their demonic forms. For Natalie, the team created five different prosthetic arms that represented the stages of her degeneration. “She has to chop off her arm,” says Murray. “We started with a silicone arm and joined the actress to a double, so she is giving the performance and her double controls the infected arm. There’s one that she actually cuts off. We’ve got one for after her arm drops off. Elizabeth went through it all.”

But that was nothing compared to the punishment Jane Levy’s Mia suffered through. “The character is caught in a thorn bush and she gets badly burnt before the whole Deadite part of her comes out,” Murray says. “We isolated eight different stages as her possession progresses with about 150 appliances that we put together in different combinations.”

Mia’s injuries became the jumping off point for her makeup design, says O’Kane. “When we first meet her, she’s coming off heroin, so she starts out very drawn and we watch her degenerate. The silicone pieces had to be made fresh every time, so Roger’s crew was beavering away daily. Jane was usually three hours in the chair before she got her contact lenses in, then she was off to set. We needed another hour just to get her out of the make-up. She was extremely patient in the chair. She hadn’t done this sort of make-up look before, but she’s really driven and loved us making her look scary.”

Levy claims to recall very little of the grueling process “I got in the chair and let them take over.” She says. “After I was done, they hosed me down so that I look sweaty and spilled a jug of blood on me. I remember when I had my head cast, they took that goo the dentist uses and covered me with it. Then they wrapped me in papier-mâché and let it harden before they cut me out of it. They also did my teeth, my tongue, my chest, my arm and my leg. It was probably a total of 12 hours of casting.”

Bruce Campbell remembers a slightly different process the first time around. “We were making head molds with plaster of Paris,” he says. “It was so primitive, we ripped all the eyelashes off of our lead actress. To get the mold off, she had to lean forward and let the gravity suck it off her face and her eyelashes were solidly embedded in the plaster.”

But this time around, even the costumes were carefully coordinated with the effects. “We worked quite closely with the prosthetics department and special effects to get the looks right,” says costume designer Sarah Voon. “The costumes had to be carefully manipulated to accommodate the rigs. Some of them have stretchy backs and others have special pieces built in. There’s not a lot you can build into a see through slip, but you’d be surprised at what you can hide with flesh colored bandaging. And blood can hide quite a lot.”

Alvarez tasked Voon with creating costumes that are timeless and have an American feel. “But he also wanted the looks to be a little bit aspirational,” says the designer. “We wanted to be able to connect with young people in the audience and create a new legion of horror fans.”

With that in mind, she created and artfully crafted a vintage-inspired look for Mia. “She doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on clothes,” says Voon. “So she gravitates toward older things, with some special pieces from her mother and her grandmother. We start off with her in her old sweatshirt over a vintage dress, because she knows she’s in for rough ride and she’s got her comfort sweatshirt. One of her other main items is a petticoat we built from a 1920s pattern. It’s a very beautiful handmade slip and that pretty much carries through the drama as she turns into a demon. We just thought that the sweet, vintage styling was in stark contrast to what she becomes. We had to create 62 slips for the various stunt doubles and body doubles, all by hand.”

Calling EVIL DEAD one of the bloodiest films of all time is not mere hyperbole, according mechanical and physical FX supervisor Jason Durey. “On 30 Days of Night, which was quite a big, bloody, vampire film, we went through 4,500 liters of blood. On this movie, we’re looking at around 25,000 liters of blood. Crikey, we probably went through about 300 liters of vomit, including testing and shooting. The volume of bodily fluids on this is well beyond anything I’ve ever done before. It’s quite yucky and completely terrifying.”

Durey says the director’s most frequent request from the FX team was “More, more, I want it bigger.” “Fede brought a new element to our shoot by pushing us with certain gags and asking for things that we weren’t sure how we were going to deliver,” he adds. “It certainly made my job interesting. He was constantly asking for more smoke or more blood, and we whacked it in.”

And that was exactly what Alvarez was looking for. “All the time, people were saying, is that too much blood? Is that too much whatever?” recalls the director. “I said, it’s never too much. Nothing is too much if we’re really going for it. Audiences should expect something completely unexpected! They’re not going to see it coming.”

The EVIL DEAD was an ultra-low budget endeavor, with much of the technology jerry-rigged in order to keep costs low. This time out, the filmmakers had deeper pockets. “And the thing that has evolved the most in filmmaking over the last 32 years is technology,” says Tapert. “We shot The EVIL DEAD on the most primitive of systems and we improvised everything. We didn’t even have dollies. We’re trying to get that same kind of manic energy using the best technology available today. We shot on brand new cameras and super high resolution 4k’s that look exactly like 16mm film.”

Perhaps the biggest change in the film’s overall look is the lighting. “In the first EVIL DEAD, we knew it was going to be in drive-in theaters,” says Tapert. “There is always more ambient light in a drive-in than a conventional theater, so we went out of our way to make the movie quite bright so that people in the drive-ins could see the image on the screen. Fede took a more artistic approach. The film has a very moody, textured and expensive look.”

Alvarez also departed from tradition by shooting many scenes in daylight. “It’s not often you see this much of a horror film set during the daytime,” he says. “But our camera was so great and had such color range, the movie looks gorgeous. I felt that, for a lot of scenes, the obvious choice would have been to do it during the night. But we found a wide range of other choices during daytime that are even scarier, because you can actually see what’s out there in the woods.”

Director of photography Aaron Morton describes the film’s overall look as “raw.” “Fede wanted a timeless quality that would lull people into a false sense of security at the opening of the film,” he says. “We use the whole gamut of classic horror tools to make the audience care about the characters, so that when they’re in trouble, we get the strongest possible reaction.”

Morton says the most challenging aspect of the production for him was finding the right balance of darkness and light. “Even when it’s dark, it’s got to have shape,” he says. “The girls have got to look beautiful and the guys have to look tough. We’re using the brand new Sony F65, which is a fantastic camera. Coupled with our Arri Master Prime Lens, it delivers a very organic, film-like look. Part of it is the mechanical shutter the camera has, which emulates the film look we’re all used to. It is at the cutting edge of digital technology at the moment.”

The cinematography pays tribute to the first film with a moment that depicts the Evil Force chasing Mia through the woods. “That shot is a motif from the original films,” says Morton. “Back in the day, they literally attached a camera to a plank of wood and had a guy on each side running with it. We wanted to put a little spin on that, so we’ve got a hand-held cable rig. When the Evil Force is chasing Mia, that’s basically me flying straight at her on a zip line. It is a pretty visceral.”

Editing also played a crucial role in creating the intensity and velocity with which the story is told. “The original had a sort of punk edge,” says editor Bryan Shaw. “It was very much of that era, the early ‘80s, and we tried to recapture that. Fede had already written it into the script. Sometimes I read a script and hope they lose three or four scenes. But this was tight. He knows how to build to a scare and how long he can suspend the moment.”

As different as the two experiences were for the filmmakers, the intense collaboration required to create EVIL DEAD reminded Tapert of the profound journey making the first film set in motion for him and his partners. “The original EVIL DEAD was physically hard and demanding, but in hindsight it was a great experience for Sam, Bruce and me,” he says. “We have been lifelong friends as a result of it. This has been much less physically demanding, because money heals some of those issues. It was great to work with Sam and Bruce on something that brought us together again.

“Fede was a pleasure to work with,” he continues. “He has the all qualities I look for in a director. Even though this is his first full-length movie, he has years of experience of working on set and having an artistic vision and chasing that vision. Working with someone like that was, for me, the best part of the process. I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next.”

Campbell is enthusiastic in his praise of the finished film: “Not only is the acting in this movie better, so are the special effects and the cinematography. You’re not going to see the green garden hose spewing the blood. This time we took modern-day technology and a decent budget and had it again. I hope that one day, there will be some wicked double bills of both EVIL DEADs. I want to introduce it at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. I think it would be a very solid interlocking double bill.”

ABOUT THE CAST

JANE LEVY (Mia) has quickly emerged as one of the most promising young actresses. At only 21 years old, she nabbed the lead character Tessa Altman of ABC’s new hit series “Suburgatory,” which will be returning for its sophomore season this fall.

In October 2012 she was seen starring alongside Victoria Justice and Chelsea Handler in the feature Fun Size, directed by Josh Schwartz for Paramount. Jane recently appeared in her first feature, Nobody Walks (written and directed by the team behind Tiny Furniture) which premiered at The 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
Levy grew up in Northern California. Though the acting bug bit her early on (she starred in community theater productions of ANNIE and THE WIZARD OF OZ,) in high school she was the captain of the varsity soccer team and on the hip hop dance team. She also excelled in chemistry. After a semester in the liberal arts program at Baltimore’s Goucher College, Jane moved to New York to pursue acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory. Two years later, she moved to Los Angeles and in a few weeks, booked a five episode arc as a trampy teen vixen in the John Wells Showtime series “Shameless” (with W.H. Macy.)
Jane resides in Los Angeles.


SHILOH FERNANDEZ (David) stars in the forthcoming dramedy Syrup, alongside Brittany Snow, Amber Heard and Kellan Lutz. Most recently, he was seen in Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood, starring opposite Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman. He was also seen in Anthony Burns’ indie Skateland (2010) with Ashley Greene, which premiered in dramatic competition at Sundance and SXSW.

Fernandez grew up in the small Northern California town of Ukiah. At the age of 19 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. His performance in the feature Crossroads: A Story of Forgiveness garnered critical praise. He was next seen in the indie thriller Interstate and the drama Gardens of the Night, alongside John Malkovich, Jeremy Sisto and Gillian Jacobs.

Fernandez then shot a recurring role on the CBS drama “Jericho,” playing Sean Hawthorne, a teenager with a mean streak. This led to roles in the underrated horror film Deadgirl, opposite Noah Segan, and supernatural thriller From Within, alongside Thomas Dekker and Rumer Willis. He then co-starred with Brian Cox in the acclaimed thriller Red, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Based on a Jack Ketchum novel, Red tells the story of a man seeking justice from three teenagers who kill his dog for no apparent reason.

Fernandez was recently seen in Cadillac Records, a period piece dealing with the rise and fall of Chess Records, the influential R&B label. He played Phil Chess opposite Adrian Brody, Beyonce Knowles, Jeffrey Wright and Gabrielle Union.

Additional television credits include Showtime’s “The United States of Tara,” opposite Toni Collette and Brie Larsen, and CW’s “Gossip Girl,” with Brittany Snow, Kristen Bell and Blake Lively.


LOU TAYLOR PUCCI (Eric) established himself among the most promising actors of his generation when Mike Mills’ Thumbsucker premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. For his performance as Justin Cobb, a compulsive 17-year-old, Pucci received both a Sundance Special Jury Prize for acting and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Pucci most recently starred in the drama The Music Never Stopped, playing a young man with devastating amnesia who uses music to reconnect with his memories and his family. He also recently filmed the lead in Alonso Mayo’s dramedy The Story of Luke, opposite Cary Elwes and Seth Green. He was also seen in an episode of HBO’s new hit series, “Girls,” starring Lena Dunham.

Other film credits include John Hindman’s The Answer Man, opposite Jeff Daniels, Lauren Graham, Kat Dennings and Olivia Thirlby; David and Alex Pastor’s Carriers, with Chris Pine, Piper Perabo and Emily VanCamp; and Will Canon’s Brotherhood, which won Best Narrative Feature at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival.

Pucci grew up in central New Jersey and had little interest in acting until, at age 10, his aunt bribed him to try out for community theater. Two years later, he appeared on Broadway as Friedrich in “The Sound of Music.” Pucci made his feature film debut as Kevin, a badly beaten young hitchhiker encountered by Fairuza Balk’s character in Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity (2002).

Other film credits include Fast Food Nation, Southland Tales, The Legend of Hell’s Gate, The Go-Getter, The Chumscrubber and Explicit Ills.

On the small screen, Pucci appeared in Fred Schepisi’s HBO movie “Empire Falls,” alongside Paul Newman and Ed Harris. He also appeared on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” with Thumbsucker co-star Vincent D’Onofrio. Pucci was also seen in Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia” video for director Samuel Bayer.

JESSICA LUCAS (Olivia) has quickly established herself as a highly sought after young actress in film and television. She recently wrapped production on the on the indie romantic comedy Are We Officially Dating? alongside Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan. Lucas will next be seen in The CW’s midseason dramatic thriller “Cult,” which premieres Tuesday, February 19th. She stars opposite Matt Davis in the series which tracks the investigation of a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances surrounding the show-within-a-show.

Lucas was most recently seen starring opposite Martin Lawrence and Brandon T. Jackson in the New Regency comedy Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, the third installment in the Big Momma’s House franchise. In 2008, she starred in one of the most highly anticipated films of the year, Cloverfield, from director J.J. Abrams. The Sci-Fi thriller opened number one at the box office. Her film credits include: DreamWorks’ romantic comedy She’s the Man opposite Amanda Bynes and a lead role in the Screen Gems/Lakeshore Film The Covenant opposite Taylor Kitsch and Chace Crawford.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Lucas has been acting since she was seven years old. She began her professional training with Children’s Theatre Arts and quickly earned theatre credits in local productions of Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, Grease, Cinderella, Mousetrap and Music Medley series. Lucas quickly transitioned to film and television. On the small screen her credits include series regular roles on NBC mid-season comedy “Friends with Benefits,” The CW’s revival of “Melrose Place,” the popular Canadian teen drama “Edgemont” and the short-lived, yet critically acclaimed ABC series “Life As We Know It, “ as well as two much-buzzed about recurring roles on The CW’s “90210,” and CBS’s #1 hit drama “CSI.”


ELIZABETH BLACKMORE (Natalie) recently played Sister Marianna on ABC’s “The Legend of the Seeker” and guest-starred on the hit Australian serial “Home and Away.” On the big screen, she had a small role in Jonathan Teplitzky’s romantic dramedy Burning Man, alongside Matthew Goode and Rachel Griffiths.

Blackmore graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2008. Her stage credits include the role of Helena in a Black Swan Theatre Company production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by Kate Cherry. She played Helena again in B Sharp’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by Eamon Flack. She played Ursula in Black Swan’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” also directed by Kate Cherry.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

FEDE ALVAREZ (Director) Born in Montevideo in 1978, Fede Alvarez began making stop-motion films at the age of 7 using his father’s SuperVHS camera. After graduating from communications school, Fede started a successful career as an advertising director specializing in visual effects. At 29, he founded his own production and post-production company and produced and directed the Youtube short “Panic Attack!” about an alien invasion in his home city of Montevideo.

The sci-fi short led to being signed by CAA and a deal at Mandate Pictures to direct a feature film with Sam Raimi producing. In early 2010 he was featured in the “100 most creative people in business” by New York-based FastCompany magazine alongside James Cameron, Ryan Murphy, and Spike Jonze.

RODO SAYAGUES (Screenwriter) is a promising newcomer to the Hollywood scene. He has directed commercials in the Uruguayan market, receiving several awards, and teamed with director Fede Alvarez to make several award-winning short films.

Sayagues was born and raised in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father, a prominent lawyer, and his mother, an English teacher, were always devoted to art and culture. They inspired their sons to appreciate classical and contemporary literature, music, theater and films.

It was at a very early stage in life that Sayagues developed a passion for cinema and music. He developed his musical abilities first, studying classical guitar before moving on to modern music. Sayagues founded several rock bands with which he played until early adulthood. It was during this period that he met his longtime creative partner Fede Alvarez and they started shooting homemade shorts with a VHS camera.

Sayagues’ passions eventually mixed as he started shooting music videos for local rock bands. Over time he began shooting videos for more prominent Uruguayan artists.

After graduating from film school Sayagues and Alvarez wrote a script called Corned Beef that earned them a scholarship at the Binger Institute in Amsterdam. While improving their script and attending screenwriting master classes, they hatched the idea for the short film Panic Attack!, which Alvarez would later direct.

In November 2009 Panic Attack! became a huge sensation online and captured the attention of Hollywood heavyweights. Alvarez traveled to Los Angeles to sign a deal with acclaimed filmmaker and producer Sam Raimi. Sayagues relocated to Los Angeles soon thereafter and the duo began working on ideas for a feature film. Their wildest dreams had come true.

ROB TAPERT (Producer) is the longstanding producing partner of acclaimed director Sam Raimi. Tapert and Raimi have been working together since they met  at Michigan State University where they formed the Society for Creative Film Making. After producing the horror cult classic EVIL DEAD, Tapert continued to collaborate with Raimi on EVIL DEAD II: Dead by Dawn, Darkman and Army of Darkness.

Tapert went on to serve as executive producer on the action features Hard Target and Timecop, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. He also executive produced the long running worldwide sensation TV series ”Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and ”Xena: Warrior Princess. Following success in television he returned to features to executive produce Raimi’s suspense thriller The Gift, starring Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves and the action western The Quick and the Dead, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone, and Gene Hackman.

In 2002, Tapert and Raimi formed Ghost House Pictures with Mandate Pictures. Ghost House was conceived to produce feature films that would deliver greatscares and offer horror fans a thrill ride experience. Tapert has since produced a string of #1 box office hits that started with The Grudge, which grossed $187 million worldwide, and continued with Boogeyman, The Messengers, 30 Days of Night and The Possession. In 2009, Tapert produced Raimi’s first directorial effort under Ghost House: the critically acclaimed Drag Me To Hell.

Tapert is currently producing the final season of Starz Media’s breakout hit series ”Spartacus.”


SAM RAIMI (Producer) has directed one the industry’s most successful film franchises ever—the blockbuster Spider-Man trilogy, which has grossed $2.5 billion at the global box office. All three films reside in the industry’s Top 25 highest grossing titles of all time.
In addition to the franchise’s commercial success, Spider-Man (2002) won that year’s People’s Choice Award as Favorite Motion Picture, earned a pair of Oscar® nominations (for VFX and sound) and also collected two GRAMMY® nominations (for Best Score and Chad Kroeger’s song “Hero”). The sequel (2004) won the Academy Award® for

Best Visual Effects (with two more nominations, Best Sound and Sound Editing) and two BAFTA nominations (for VFX and sound), among dozens of other honors.

Apart from creating one of Hollywood’s landmark film series, Raimi’s eclectic resume includes the gothic thriller The Gift, starring Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Greg Kinnear and Giovanni Ribisi; the acclaimed suspense thriller A Simple Plan, which starred Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and Bridget Fonda (for which Thornton earned an Academy Award® nomination for Best Supporting Actor and Scott B. Smith landed a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay); his baseball homage, For Love of the Game, with Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston; the western The Quick and the Dead, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone, Russell Crowe and Gene Hackman; and his most recent effort, the supernatural thriller, Drag Me to Hell, with Alison Lohman and Justin Long.

Raimi began his career in his native Michigan after directing his own Super 8 movies as a teenager. He left his studies at Michigan State University to form Renaissance Pictures with future producer Rob Tapert and their longtime friend, actor Bruce Campbell, with whom he made his very first film, Within the Woods, a short horror film they used to raise money to make a feature. That resulting horror classic, The EVIL DEAD (1982), financed and produced with investments from local business people and doctors, became a hit at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival and spawned a sequel, EVIL DEAD 2: Dead By Dawn (1987), which, like the original, showcased Raimi’s inventive, imaginative direction and offbeat humor.

Raimi next turned to the fantasy genre, writing and directing the comic book-inspired Darkman (1990), starring Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand, then followed with 1993’s Army of Darkness, a comic sword and sorcery fantasy starring Bruce Campbell.

The mid-’90s also found Raimi producing two telefilms (with friend and partner Tapert) that would become the genesis of a pair of highly popular syndicated series—”Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” (on which he served as executive producer during the program’s four-year run) and the successful companion series, “Xena: Warrior Princess” which aired from 1995-2001. His television work also includes executive producing the CBS series “American Gothic” and Starz! graphic sword and sandals series, “Spartacus: War of the Damned.”

Raimi continued his collaboration with Tapert in his production company Ghost House Pictures, which produced such films as The Grudge, Boogeyman, 30 Days of Night, The Messengers and The Possession.

Raimi’s work has been a favorite on the film festival circuit, with the filmmaker winning a Best Director honor for Darkman at the 1990 Sitges-Catalonian Festival in Spain; the Critics Award for Army of Darkness at the 1992 Fantasporto Festival in Portugal; the Golden Raven, also for “Army of Darkness,” at the 1992 Brussels International Festival; and a Grand Prize nomination for the same title at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in France. Raimi himself has also won the Saturn Award twice (Spider-Man 2, along with a George Pal Memorial Award) from the Academy of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy.

BRUCE CAMPBELL (Producer) is an icon of cult cinema and a comic leading man of the first order. He co-stars on USA Network’s hit series “Burn Notice” as ex-SEAL Sam Axe. His recent credits include the fun-filled Disney film Sky High, thriller The Woods and A&E’s “Touch the Top of the World,” an inspiring true story about the first blind person to climb Mt. Everest. In 2011 Campbell voiced the role of Rod “Torque” Redline in Cars 2, the sequel to the animated hit. Next he will join his filmmaking pal Sam Raimi on Oz: The Great and Powerful, starring James Franco and Michelle Williams.

Campbell’s story begins in 1979 when, together with his childhood friends Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, he helped to raise $350,000 for a low-budget film called The EVIL DEAD. Campbell both co-produced and starred in the film. Completed piecemeal over four years, The EVIL DEAD first gained notoriety in England when it became the bestselling video of 1983, beating out The Shining.

After its appearance at Cannes, where Stephen King dubbed it “the most ferociously original horror film of the year,” New Line Cinema stepped forward to release The EVIL DEAD in the U.S. It swiftly became seen as a horror classic.

After co-producing Crimewave, a cross-genre comedy written by Raimi and collaborators Joel and Ethan Coen, Campbell moved to Los Angeles. He gained a foothold producing or starring in genre films such as the Maniac Cop series, Lunatics: A Love Story and Moontrap. On Mindwarp, described as a post-apocalyptic Jeremiah Johnson, Campbell met his wife-to-be, filmmaker Ida Gearon.

Next Campbell co-produced and starred in EVIL DEAD II and Army of Darkness, completing 12 years of work on the cult favorite. His experience in the rough-and-tumble role of Ash was a plus when Campbell made his first foray into television, starring in the action-oriented series “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.” (1993) on Fox and recurring on “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” for ABC.

Campbell easily made the transition to director, helming numerous episodes and recurring as the King of Thieves on the hit syndicated series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys,” and its follow-up phenomenon, “Xena: Warrior Princess.” Campbell also directed and starred as himself in My Name is Bruce, a spoof of his B-movie career. Most recently, he starred in and executive-produced the television movie “Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe,” which gave fans insight on how their beloved “Burn Notice” character came to be.

Campbell expanded his range as an actor with appearances in Disney’s TV movies “Gold Rush” and “The Love Bug.” He teamed up with Fox again for the hit TV film “Tornado!” and starred in NBC’s top-rated “In the Line of Duty: Blaze of Glory” before venturing into the sitcom world with a recurring role on ABC’s Emmy®®-nominated “Ellen,” participating in one of the three “Out” episodes. Following decidedly dramatic turns on the acclaimed series “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “The X-Files,” Campbell enjoyed a recurring role on Showtime’s edgy TV-industry comedy “Beggars and Choosers.”

Never abandoning his film roots, during this time Campbell appeared in the Michael Crichton adaptation Congo, John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A., the award-winning crime drama Running Time, romantic comedy Serving Sara, Jim Carrey’s The Majestic and Sam Raimi’s blockbuster Spider-Man series.

After a return to episodic television in the swashbuckling series “Jack of All Trades,” Campbell took the title role in Don COscar®elli’s cult sleeper Bubba Ho-tep, opposite Ossie Davis. His directorial debut, “Man with the Screaming Brain” premiered on SyFy and Dark Horse Comics published an adaptation.

An accomplished voice actor, Campbell has played characters in video games for Activision, THQ and Nova Logic. Other voice credits include the “Tarzan” animated TV series and features The Ant Bully and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Campbell is an author with back-to-back New York Times bestsellers: a memoir entitled If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor and his first novel, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way. He continues to share his filmmaking experience, lecturing at universities such as Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford.

Campbell currently resides in Oregon with his wife, Ida Gearon.

JOE DRAKE (Executive Producer) is Co-founder of Good Universe, an independent full-service motion picture financing, production and global sales company. Drake formed the company in May 2012 with former Mandate Pictures partner Nathan Kahane. The company was formed with the capital to fully finance films, a development slate of over 15 feature films, and the continuity of an executive team that have launched 70 films and generated over $4.5 billion in worldwide box office. Within the company’s first month of business, Good Universe financed its first two motion pictures — Oldboy, directed by Spike Lee starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen and Sharlto Copley to be released by FilmDistrict in October 2013; and the comedy Last Vegas with partner CBS Films to be released in November 2013 featuring an Academy Award®-winning cast including Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen.

Drake and Kahane formed Good Universe with a two pronged feature film strategy.  A franchise-building strategy Drake pioneered as President of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group which resulted in the global box office hit The Expendables and global juggernaut The Hunger Games franchise.  In addition to franchises, Good Universe will continue to focus on the kinds of niche movies that brought acclaim and significant profitability for its predecessor company Mandate Pictures such as the highly profitable global box office success Juno, which garnered a host of accolades including an Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay and three additional Academy Award® nominations, and the Harold & Kumar franchise; as well as pictures under the successful horror brand Ghost House Pictures which has enjoyed six #1 hits since The Grudge in 2004 and most recently The Possession in 2012.

Drake founded Mandate Pictures in 2005, following a management buyout of Senator International which he launched in 2001. In 2002, Drake and Kahane formed a separate joint venture with Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Ghost House Pictures, which continues to be a leader in the horror genre.  In 2007, the partners sold Mandate Pictures to Lionsgate. Following the acquisition of Mandate, Drake transitioned into his role as the president of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group and co-chief operating officer of Lionsgate, while maintaining his role as CEO of Mandate Pictures. Drake continued to operate Mandate as an autonomous brand moving the company forward with hits including Hope Springs starring Meryl Streep, the Golden Globe®-nominated 50/50, the upcoming Seth Rogen/Jonah Hill comedy This Is The End and Ghost House Picture’s much anticipated EVIL DEAD remake to be released by Sony Pictures in 2013.  At his post at Lionsgate, Drake ran all areas of Lionsgate’s theatrical production, distribution, marketing, acquisition and international operations. Under Drake’s tenure, the Motion Picture Group doubled its average box office revenue generating more than $3 billion in global box office, earned 23 Academy Award® nominations and four Academy Award® wins, and experienced the most profitable period in the company’s history adding over $600 million in value to Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group.

Earlier in his career, Drake served posts at Rysher Entertainment, Senator International, Lionsgate International, and Moviestore Entertainment.


NATHAN KAHANE (Executive Producer) is Co-founder of Good Universe, an independent full-service motion picture financing, production and global sales company. Having served as an executive producer on more than 25 films in his career, Kahane oversees the development and production of the company’s growing feature slate, nurtures relationships with high-level talent and filmmakers and consistently puts together winning business models behind compelling films.

Kahane is currently shepherding Good Universe’s diverse production and development slate which includes Oldboy, directed by Spike Lee starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen and Sharlto Copley which will be released by FilmDistrict in October 2013; the comedy Last Vegas with partner CBS Films to be released in November 2013 featuring an Academy Award®-winning cast including Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen; Mindy Kaling’s The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie, an original witty rom-com to be produced by Mr. Mudd Productions, with Anne Hathaway attached to star; Angelfall, an adaptation of Susan Ee’s bestselling book series to be produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert; Cherries, a comedy spec by Brian and James Kehoe to be produced by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg; and Kahane is once again reteaming with Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jonathan Levine, and Will Reiser on a feature comedy, The Untitled Jamaica Project.

Nathan Kahane is also partners with Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Joe Drake in Ghost House Pictures, a production label dedicated to the financing, development and release of films in the horror thriller genre.  Kahane continues to oversee the daily operations of Ghost House and most recently executive produced The Possession, released by Lionsgate in August 2012, and the much anticipated EVIL DEAD remake, to be released by Sony Pictures and FilmDistrict in April 2013. Ghost House has a diverse production and development slate which includes Poltergeist, the landmark franchise being reinvigorated by MGM that Ghost House will produce, and The Day of the Triffids, written by Neil Cross based on the classic sci-fi horror novel written by John Wyndam and the 1962 film Invasion of the Triffids.

In his former role as President of Mandate Pictures, Kahane’s commitment to producing smartly budgeted quality films generated global box-office success for the company with films such as the $227 million worldwide box office sensation Juno which garnered a host of accolades including an Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay and three additional Academy Award® nominations, and Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction.  The company also launched successful franchises including the Harold & Kumar series and Ghost House Pictures’ The Grudge series. When Lionsgate acquired Mandate in 2007, Kahane continued to operate the label as an autonomous brand moving the company forward with hits he executive produced such as the Golden Globe®-nominated and Independent Spirit Award-winning (Best First Screenplay) comedy 50/50; the Golden Globe®-nominated comedy Young Adult, directed by Jason Reitman; and the Golden Globe®-nominated Hope Springs starring Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell, released by Sony Pictures in August 2012. Kahane served as a producer on The Strangers, and on all three installments of the Harold & Kumar series. Kahane shepherded Mandate’s upcoming feature comedy This Is The End starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride, to be released by Sony Pictures in June 2013.

Kahane previously headed development and acquisition of feature films for the LA-based Senator International. Prior to joining Senator International, he co-headed the development and production slate for Mark Canton’s production company, The Canton Company (housed at Warner Bros.), where he was Executive Vice President of Production. Kahane is a graduate of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and began his entertainment career in the agent training program at ICM.

J.R. YOUNG (Executive Producer) has been involved in all of Ghost House Pictures’ releases since their 2004 debut, The Grudge. Currently executive vice president of production, Young oversees the company’s development slate while remaining active in production. Most recently he produced The Possession, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick, which opened atop the domestic box office. He served as co-producer on box-office success The Messengers, starring Kristen Stewart, and executive-produced the sequel Messengers: The Scarecrow. He also served as co-producer on Boogeyman II and continued the franchise as executive producer of Boogeyman III.

Young was the executive producer of the third installment of The Grudge series, released in 2009. Following this he co-produced 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, based on the acclaimed graphic novel. He has played a key role in expanding the company’s content creation online, spawning the story for the Fearnet series “Devil’s Trade.”

Prior to joining Ghost House Young served as the director’s assistant on Spider-Man II. A graduate of Syracuse University, Young started his film career at International Creative Management (ICM) and later Zide/Perry Entertainment.


PETER SCHLESSEL (Executive Producer) has built a varied and entrepreneurial career in the entertainment industry. In 2010 he co-founded FilmDistrict and serves as its CEO, as well as president of sister company GK Films. FilmDistrict’s initial successes include Insidious, Soul Surfer, Drive, Safety Not Guaranteed, Looper, Playing for Keeps and Red Dawn while the upcoming slate includes Parker and Dead Man Down. Schlessel served as executive producer on several of those films.
In 1989 Schlessel started his career at Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) as director of legal affairs for RCA/Columbia Home Video. He was subsequently VP of business affairs, SVP of acquisitions and business affairs, and EVP of acquisitions and co-productions. In 1996 he co-founded Screen Gems, which was set up to finance and produce midrange-budgeted genre pictures. During his tenure at SPE he supervised more than 1500 third-party acquisitions. Under Schlessel’s supervision revenue grew tenfold for the acquisition and co-production lines of business. In 2000 Schlessel was promoted to president of production for Columbia Pictures.

In Schlessel’s three years in that post Columbia’s box office ranking rose from No. 8 in 2000 to No. 1 in 2002, setting a then-industry record of $1.57 billion. In 2003 Schlessel was promoted to president of Columbia Pictures and became involved in summer hits Spider-Man, Charlie’s Angels and S.W.A.T. Internationally he spearheaded Columbia’s acquisition of T3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator: Salvation.

In 2004 Schlessel left Sony to consult for a number of different companies including DreamWorks, McG’s Wonderland and Mandate Pictures. He also assisted Jeff Skoll in founding Participant Productions. As a producer he was involved with such films as Stay Alive, Prey and The Possession.

Schlessel returned to SPE in 2006 as the president of worldwide acquisitions before being promoted to president of worldwide affairs. He was responsible for SPE’s involvement in such pictures as District 9 and Michael Jackson’s This Is It. SPE’s release of GK Films’ The Tourist and Jersey Boys was under an output deal Schlessel initiated. He also oversaw SPE’s Lot Project, which included the construction of two office towers, a new commissary, athletic club and park.

Schlessel currently serves on the Board of Advisors for the Young Storytellers Foundation and Film Independent. He is a graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

NICOLE BROWN (Co-Producer) As Executive Vice President of Production for Good Universe, Nicole Brown oversees the development of the company’s slate of films and manages the creative infrastructure. Brown’s expertise lies in seeking out compelling material and closely collaborating with writers and directors to build entrepreneurial opportunities around their projects. Brown transitioned into her role at Good Universe after serving as EVP of Production for Mandate Pictures since 2006.  She served as an executive producer on Mandate Pictures’ Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, starring Steve Carell and Keira Knightley, released by Focus Features; A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, released worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures; the upcoming Untitled Diablo Cody project starring Julianne Hough, Russell Brand, Octavia Spencer and Holly Hunter; and the comedy This Is The End starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride, to be released by Sony Pictures in June 2013. Brown also served as a co-producer on a number of features, including 50/50, starring Golden Globe®-nominated Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, released by Summit Entertainment; LOL, a remake of the French box office hit starring Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore; Whip It, starring Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page; Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, directed by Peter Sollett, starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings; the crime thriller The Horsemen, starring Dennis Quaid; and Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. Brown has also served as an executive producer on projects under the Ghost House Pictures label, including The Possession, released by Lionsgate.  She is currently overseeing the EVIL DEAD remake for Ghost House, to be released by Sony Pictures and FilmDistrict in 2013.

Brown is currently shepherding projects for Good Universe including the comedy Last Vegas with partner CBS Films to be released in November 2013 featuring an Academy Award®-winning cast including Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen; Angelfall, an adaptation of Susan Ee’s bestselling book series to be produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert; Mindy Kaling’s The Low Self Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie, an original witty rom-com to be produced by Mr. Mudd Productions, with Anne Hathaway attached to star; and The Untitled Jamaica Project, an original feature comedy produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, directed by Jonathan Levine, and written by Will Reiser.

Before joining Mandate, Brown was a development executive at Marc Platt Productions where, in addition to her role as Associate Producer on Honey starring Jessica Alba, she helped set up several projects at various studios, including Nappily Ever After, starring Halle Berry; The Book of Leo, starring Seann William Scott; the Dusty Springfield biopic, Say You Love Me, starring Kristin Chenoweth; Compositions in Black and White, starring Alicia Keys for Sony; The Untitled Marla Ruzica Project, starring Kirsten Dunst for MTV and Paramount; Love in the Driest Season for HBO; and a horror remake with Alexandra Seros entitled A Child's Game at Gold Circle. Brown also sold two hotly contested comic books to Universal, Talent and Tag. A Columbia University graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, Brown began her career as an intern at Miramax in New York.


MATT LEONETTI, JR. (Co-Producer) brings more than 15 years of industry and production experience to his position as Executive Vice President of Physical Production for Good Universe. From pre-production through post, Leonetti oversees all aspects of physical production for Good Universe’s entire slate of films, as well as those produced under the Ghost House Pictures banner. Leonetti transitioned into his role at Good Universe after serving as EVP of Physical Production for Mandate Pictures. At Mandate, he worked on a number of feature films including Hope Springs, starring Academy Award®-winner Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell, released by Sony Pictures in August 2012; Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, starring Steve Carell and Keira Knightley, released by Focus Features in June 2012; the upcoming Untitled Diablo Cody project, which marks Diablo Cody’s directional feature debut, starring Julianne Hough, Russell Brand, Octavia Spencer and Holly Hunter; and the comedy This Is The End starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride, to be released by Sony Pictures in June 2013.  Under the Ghost House banner, Leonetti has most recently worked on The Possession, released by Lionsgate in August 2012; and the EVIL DEAD remake, with original producing partners Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell, to be released by Sony Pictures and FilmDistrict in April 2013.

Leonetti is currently working on Good Universe’s diverse production slate which includes Oldboy, directed by Spike Lee starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen and Sharlto Copley which will be released by FilmDistrict in October 2013; and the comedy Last Vegas with partner CBS Films to be released in November 2013 featuring an Academy Award®-winning cast including Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen.

A Los Angeles native and graduate of the University of Virginia with a degree in Business, Leonetti went on to become a successful freelance line producer and production manager. Leonetti’s previous credits include Trespass, a crime drama starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman; The Mechanic, a high impact thriller starring Jason Statham and Donald Sutherland; The Expendables, a star-packed action extravaganza including Sylvester Stallone and Mickey Rourke; and the action-adventure reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man.


SALLY CAMPBELL (Line Producer) is one of New Zealand’s most sought-after line producers. In 1991 Campbell started out as a production accountant on the iconic New Zealand feature The End of the Golden Weather and worked in TV on “The Ray Bradbury Theater.”

International productions soon followed, including The Seventh Floor, an international co-production shot in Australia, and “Deepwater Haven,” a family series for television. These projects led to a long tenure as an executive with South Pacific Pictures, producers of Whale Rider. In this capacity Campbell worked as production manager and line producer on TV productions such as “Citylife” and “Plain Clothes.” Later taking on the role of head of production for South Pacific, she was an executive producer on series “Shortland Street,” “Mercy Peak,” “Mataku” and “Being Eve.”

From 2004 to 2009 Campbell was a producer for the “Power Rangers” series produced for Disney/ABC cable networks in the U.S. She served as producer for 22 Season 2 episodes of “Legend of the Seeker,” also for Disney/ABC.

SALLY CAMPBELL (Line Producer) is one of New Zealand’s most sought-after line producers. In 1991 Campbell started out as a production accountant on the iconic New Zealand feature The End of the Golden Weather and worked in TV on “The Ray Bradbury Theater.”

International productions soon followed, including The Seventh Floor, an international co-production shot in Australia, and “Deepwater Haven,” a family series for television. These projects led to a long tenure as an executive with South Pacific Pictures, producers of Whale Rider. In this capacity Campbell worked as production manager and line producer on TV productions such as “Citylife” and “Plain Clothes.” Later taking on the role of head of production for South Pacific, she was an executive producer on series “Shortland Street,” “Mercy Peak,” “Mataku” and “Being Eve.”

From 2004 to 2009 Campbell was a producer for the “Power Rangers” series produced for Disney/ABC cable networks in the U.S. She served as producer for 22 Season 2 episodes of “Legend of the Seeker,” also for Disney/ABC.


AARON MORTON (Director of Photography) has lensed such series as “Legend of the Seeker” for Disney/ABC and the very successful Starz series “Spartacus: Vengeance.”
Heading straight out of high school into the role of camera loader, Morton immersed himself in the world of the camera department. After numerous short films and commercials, he eventually landed a job as second-unit clapper loader on the first season of “Xena: Warrior Princess.” Staying with the production for its entire six-season run, Morton’s position changed with each year. By the time the last season was shot, he was director of photography for the second unit.

In the last few years, Morton has shot commercials for the likes of Sony, Coke, Vodafone and Adidas. He lensed large action sequences for films such as 30 Days of Night and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, along with various successful films produced in his native New Zealand. One such film, Nemesis Game, earned Morton the prized cinematography award at the New Zealand Film Awards. Another, Sione’s Wedding, broke records at the domestic box office.


ROB GILLIES (Production Designer) has enjoyed a career spanning nearly 30 years, over which time he has worked on a wide variety of international and New Zealand film and television productions. Gillies is a five-time winner of New Zealand Film and Television Awards for Best Design.

For the big screen Gilles production designed Bridge to Terabithia, starring Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb; Roger Donaldson’s biopic The World’s Fastest Indian, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins; and The Boogeyman, with Emily Deschanel.

While Gillies has worked internationally on numerous TV commercials, he is best known for his work as production designer on “Legend of the Seeker” and more than 400 episodes of the internationally beloved syndicated series “Hercules: the Legendary Journeys” and “Xena: Warrior Princess.”


BRYAN SHAW (Editor) is a New Zealand-based editor for film and television. His recent work includes editing the action-comedy feature The Devil Dared Me To and the successful “Spartacus” series airing on Starz.

In 1984 Shaw began working at Northern Television in the tape department. There he learned from seasoned pros such as cameraman John Cavill and editor Hamish Hill. He later worked with Neil Roberts at production house Communicado, specializing in documentaries.

Shaw later went freelance and worked on the long-running crime and punishment series “Street Legal.” He has won awards for editing series such as “Doves of War” and “Outrageous Fortune” as well as the documentary Love, Speed and Loss.


SARAH VOON (Costume Designer) is a New Zealand-based costume designer with international experience in features, television and commercials. Most recently she designed costumes for My Wedding and Other Secrets (2011), a feature film directed by Roseanne Liang.

Voon’s career began in 1995 as a costume assistant on the second unit for “Xena: Warrior Princess.” She eventually moved up the ranks to become a costume department head on the main unit for “Hercules: the Legendary Journeys.”

During this time Voon honed her skills under the guidance of Ngila Dickson, the Academy Award®-winning costume designer for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. She then stepped into the role of costume designer for the New Zealand dramas “Mercy Peak” and “Being Eve” before moving on to “Go Girls” for five highly successful seasons between 2008 and 2012.

In between film and TV jobs Voon has worked as wardrobe stylist for a large range of commercials including campaigns for Vodafone, McDonalds, Pepsi, Lexus, Nintendo, Green Giant and Ponds.


ROQUE BANOS (Music) Since scoring his first film in 1997, Roque Baños is enjoying a prolific and rewarding career, perhaps best known internationally for his incredibly well received scores to films like The Machinist, Sexy Beast, The Last Circus, and The Intruders. His great facility for employing a wide range of styles, including jazz, rock, multi-ethnic folk and many different classical influences for the many genre of pictures he’s composed has lead to him being sought out for the truly unique voice that he can provide to a wide range of projects. His recent move to Los Angeles prompted by his commission to compose the score to the Ghost House/ Sony remake of EVIL DEAD (produced by Sam Raimi and directed by Fede Alvarez), promises to create an even keener awareness of his talents on this continent.

Roque certainly has been one of the busiest composers in Spain, having worked with some the country’s most renowned directors, including Alex de la Iglesia, Daniel Monzon, Carlos Saura, Emilio Martinez Lazaro, and Santiago Segura, as well as other internationally acclaimed directors Jonathan Glazer, Brad Anderson, Marcelo Piñeyro and Gerard Junot. His film score suites have been also widely performed with great success in many concerts halls, festivals and auditoriums all over Europe, for which he often also conducts.

Born in Jumilla (Murcia) Spain in 1968, he began his musical education at the Murcia Conservatory where he specialized in saxophone, obtaining Honors in both music theory and in saxophone. In 1986 he moved to Madrid, completing his studies at the Madrid Royal Conservatory of Music with honors, earning degrees in Saxophone, Piano, Music Theory, Harmony, Counterpoint, Composition and Conducting.

In 1993, after receiving a grant from the Ministry of Culture, he moved to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music, majoring in Music Composition for Film and Jazz. At Berklee he received the “Robert Share Award” for demonstrating the highest musical-dramatic level in the area of film music composition, and an “Achievement Award” for his outstanding performance abilities. He graduated “Summa Cum Laude” in the fields of Film Scoring and Performance in 1997.

Roque’s career first developed as a concert saxophone player performing in a number of concerts in Spain and abroad, both as a soloist and as part of various chamber ensembles. He featured his own works and those of others from Spain and abroad. His principal goal, however, was always directed towards the areas composition and conducting, and finding his way in these fields became his principal occupation. His concert work was at the National Auditorium in Madrid, the Reina Sofia Auditorium, the Cultural Circle of Fine Arts Hall, and in many festivals of contemporary music and other concert halls and events across Spain, as well as becoming part of the repertoire of many orchestras in Europe. He has been named “Distinguished Son” from his hometown, Jumilla.


JANE O’KANE (Makeup and Hair Designer) has worked on the syndicated hits “Hercules: the Legendary Journeys” and “Xena: Warrior Princess,” both produced by Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi’s Pacific Renaissance Pictures.

Born and raised in England, O’Kane first gained work experience at the Royal Shakespeare Company. There she had the opportunity to work with some of England’s finest wigmakers and broaden her skills in both makeup and special effects.

A move to Manchester in 1992 led O’Kane to work for the Royal Exchange Theatre. Moving to New Zealand in 1995, her first work in television was on “Hercules” in the makeup department and also with Weta Workshop, in special effects. This experience led to many years working for Pacific Renaissance on “Hercules,” “Xena,” “Spartacus: Vengeance” and other projects.

Over the last 18 years O’Kane has continued to work extensively in the film and television industry in New Zealand and overseas. Her broad spectrum of skills makes her a triple threat able to contribute in the areas of makeup, hair and special effects.


ROGER MURRAY (Props and Prosthetics) co-founded the props and special effects workshop Main Reactor in 2002, partnered with his wife Felicity Letcher. The company was born to meet a growing need in Auckland, New Zealand, for facilities to service feature film, television drama and commercial projects. Main Reactor has grown to become a premier props and prosthetics workshop for New Zealand and the international film industry.

Main Reactor’s recent credits include props fabrication for Emperor, starring Matthew Fox and Tommy Lee Jones, and Mr. Pip, starring Hugh Laurie and Kerry Fox. The company handled creature and props manufacturing on the “Legend of the Seeker” television series for Disney/ABC as well as props and prosthetics for “Spartacus: Vengeance,” a hit for Starz, and subsequent “Spartacus” projects.

Murray’s numerous art department credits include Avatar, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aliens in the Attic, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, 30 Days of Night and Bridge to Terabithia.

• Prev
• Next