What was with the rewriteing ?
Why was this a re write as though only Linda and ash were at he cabin ? It was not pointless why not just have it when the the 1st movie ended ?
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MovieChat Forums > Evil Dead II (1987) Discussion > What was with the rewriteing ?
Congratulations! This is the #1 asked question in the entire Evil Dead saga.
The "real world" answer is that the Director could not get the rights to the footage from the first film, since the rights were a nightmare due to having SO MANY investors. So, to get around the legal rights issues, they just did a quick recap, wrote out the other characters and started it fresh with Ash & Linda.
Evil Dead was a VERY small picture and is not the mainstream hit it is now. Back then, few people had even heard of the first one, much less seen it, so Raimi didn't think much of it and just did the sequel. Evil Dead 2 is the reason the franchise gained popularity, and by the time Army of Darkness rolled around, Bruce was a cult icon.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Unofficial-Ash-vs-Evil-Dead/466308540194451
I'm not an Evil Dead expert, but even 'Evil Dead 2' was not a studio movie and "only" earned just under $6 million, putting it just outside the top-100 for highest grossing movies of 1987.
Much like the 1st film, it seems like 'Evil Dead 2' was more a success based on reputation and had a cult following and I assume a lot of people probably discovered it on home video.
I doubt they would've called it 'Evil Dead 2' if the first Evil Dead film wasn't a success on some level.
I think they definitely retconned the "original" backstory because of the legal issues associated with using footage from the original film.......and I think it was just easier to tell the backstory with only Ash and his girlfriend since they had to re-film it. And it made it easier for the story they were telling in 'Evil Dead 2' to only have Ash's girlfriend involved in the backstory.
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