Sam Raimi Is Making A Horror Movie For Disney

Some filmmakers are born to create a certain genre. James Cameron was made to make action films. Few directors know how to navigate a sequence in a way that makes it feel alive like Cameron. Nancy Meyers is a master of romantic comedies. She has spent decades giving us rich, relatable characters and making them fumble through delightful misunderstandings. When it comes to bug nuts, over-the-top, blood-soaked horror with a touch of comedy, Sam Raimi is your man.

Raimi got his start by making a movie with his buddies in the woods. They didn’t have much money. The cabin they used had no plumbing. Crew members, who were mostly family and friends, got into arguments due to the difficult living conditions. What emerged was The Evil Dead, a film that would spawn a franchise and make Raimi an in-demand director and a new voice in the horror genre.

After making a third Evil Dead film, titled Army of Darkness, Raimi seemingly took a break from horror. He made a baseball movie and a western. There were a couple of thrillers on his docket. Old Sam directed a trilogy of superhero films that likely won’t be well-remembered. Glider… something? I don’t remember. He returned to horror in 2009 with the wonderfully outrageous and aptly titled Drag Me to Hell and has only made two movies since.

One of the two films he directed was a sequel to the 2016 film (Jesus, 2016?!?) Doctor Strange. Raimi stepped in after Scott Derrickson left the project. What Raimi made wasn’t quite as bonkers and violent as he is capable of, but it was pretty damn close. He took a crack at the MCU and used his opportunity to explode heads and turn fan-casted actors into spaghetti. Reception was mixed, but Disney seemed to approve of his work.

Deadline announced that Raimi will be directing a new, original horror film titled Send Help for 20th Century Studios (a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation). The film was written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who also wrote Freddy vs. Jason and Baywatch. Deadline describes the film as “somewhere between Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation Misery and Robert Zemeckis’ classic Castaway.”

This is joyous news. Deadline does point out that the deal has yet to be officially greenlit, but it sounds too good to pass up.