Ash Vs Evil Dead gets Battlestar Galactica and Daredevil show runner for Season 3
As far as I can find on google and social media neither Starz, nor any of the creative team involved in the show have officially announced Season 3 (and I watch all the interviews and listen to all the podcast appearances for every scrap of news, I promise you!). Deadline broke the story on Oct 7th during NYC Comic Con. However did Bruce Campbell actually reveal it before that? Read on...
Apparently 100% confirming Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 3, the US site for Empire Magazine is reporting that TV royalty, Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Daredevil) is taking over as show runner for Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 3.
Verheiden goes way back with the Evil Dead guys - Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert produced one of his first scripts, Timecop, Bruce Campbell directed his script for My Name is Bruce and he even wrote the comic book adaption of the original The Evil Dead for Dark Horse.
The Chin himself, Bruce Campbell seemingly announced Verheiden's addition to the AVED crew (without really announcing it) back on October 2nd in an interview with Quint on Ain't It Cool News (pre-dating the Season 3 announcement by Deadline by 5 days) -
Bruce Campbell: Someone was like “Aren't you tired of playing Ash?” and I was like “I just started!” Seriously, if you think about it Ash is just beginning to come into his own. And it's nice to play him again after 25 years of experience. It was great to work with Sam (Raimi) again. He learned a bunch of new tricks, I learned new tricks. It was good to apply that. It's been 25 years and we've all done lots of weird, different stuff. I like revisiting this character.
Quint: I imagine so, especially on TV where you can do more than a simple 90 minute mission movie.
Bruce Campbell: Right. Now it's time for the big story, the big arc. We get Mark Verheiden in this season, who is an old-time sci-fi guy with a lot of experience. He wrote My Name Is Bruce. I'm very excited to get Mark involved. It's his writer's room now, he's running the show.
Quint: I always appreciate good character work, which is why I really dig the family dynamic that's growing between Ash, Pablo and Kelly.
Bruce Campbell: I've had meetings with Mark and what's important to all of us for the long term health of the show is that we service the secondary characters. Those actors gotta get out of bed going “Cool! Can't wait to do this or that” rather than being the guy who says every fourth line. “Yeah, sounds good, Ash!” or “Come on, let's go!” I think Mark will add a new dynamic to that, too.
And later in the interview he says...
Bruce Campbell: You have to peel back the levels of the underworld, which has its own hierarchy with their own goals. Now that he's unleashed the dead, what do they want? What's their mission? Ours is to put the shit back, but cat's out of the bag.
Quint: Yeah, I noticed the show's doing a lot of mythology building with that stuff.
Bruce Campbell: That's something Verheiden will bring to it, too. He's got that Battlestar Galactica background. You've got to tell bigger stories. Ash is foretold in an ancient book. Regardless if you think he's an idiot, you've got to address that. He was in an ancient book, so there's gotta be some destiny this guy has.
Quint: He's there for a reason.
Bruce Campbell: Absolutely. That's a great thing to explore: What is his destiny? Aside from being a jackass...
Mark Verheiden says that changes are coming to Ash Vs Evil Dead in Season 3, not ones that will rock the boat or destroy the formula but rather changes that should give the series a longevity and avoid the show from repeating itself or becoming stale.
“We’re early into it, and there’s a little bit of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but I think if I have any sort of mandate for myself, it’s to change things up a little bit,” he says. “We don’t want to repeat ourselves. It’s all the same characters, but we’re exploring different ways they can interact, maybe introducing a new character or two into the mix, and challenging them in sort of different ways. But it will still be Evil Dead, it will still be Ash doing his chainsaw-swinging action. Those parts are still very active. I think the big thing is we don’t want to do seasons one or two again, we want to be sure that the new season seems fresh, that we’re opening up the mythology a little bit and opening the characters up a little bit more, but never losing that Evil Dead flavor.”
As for what we here at the After Movie Diner think? Well this is interesting and exciting news. We're hoping that with Mark Verheiden we get more character development, more of a delve into the world and more of a structure to the series.
There's no word as to what happened with former show runner Craig DiGregorio. He was all over the special features and previews for Season 1 but Season 2 seems to be way more in Rob Tapert's hands. I haven't seen Craig DiGregorio once in any of the behind the scenes stuff, I don't think! But considering that, repeatedly, the cast have spoken about the writer's room being 3,000 miles away from set, where Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert and the cast and crew of each episode have far more influence, who is leading up the writer's room may have less of an impact than we might think. Here's hoping, though, that with his personal and professional history with the main creative team and his strong background in fan friendly TV, Mark Verheiden can steer the AVED ship through seasons 3, 4 and beyond!
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 2 continues with episode 6 this Sunday (Nov 6th) on Starz
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Amendment: Bruce Campbell also mentioned Season 3 officially yesterday, Oct 31st, on Collider's After Ash interview, see below.
