Fede Alvarez Wanted Ash to Have Bigger Evil Dead Remake Cameo, Says Ash May Be Related to Mia

Fede Alvarez said during an interview that he tried to get Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams to cameo in his Evil Dead remake. Alvarez spoke with Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast and revealed that he wanted Ash to be the person who picks up Jane Levy’s Mia in the epilogue of the film (as seen in the extended cut).

The true story was… I wanted Bruce Campbell to be that guy, I wanted Ash to be the guy that picks her up,” Alvarez confirmed. “I shot it in a way that was very simple for me to get Bruce and get him to do the cameo at the end. But then Bruce was like – and he was totally right – ‘I just feel like it’s gonna be like I’m the milkman and just show up…and I think that’s not special.’ [Bruce] was right, it was very hard to give a real reason why Ash will show up, and a coincidence that Ash would drive by and find a dying Mia. So, he decided not to do it. I did do a mock-up of it. So there’s a version of that ending, with Bruce’s face glued to [the truck driver’s face].”

Campbell does show up at the end of the film, appearing after the credits and giving his “Groovy” catchphrase. Alvarez recalled shooting the segment, saying, “One day I just show up with a very small camera and was like, ‘Come with me, Bruce.’ I took the lamp from my desk, I put it behind him and another in front of him, and he’s like, ‘What the fuck are we doing?’ I was like, ‘We’re doing your cameo in the movie!’ And he’s like, ‘You’re kidding?!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re going to be in the movie and you’re going to be standing there, and you’re just going to look at me for a second and just say groovy.’ It was a very low budget shot.”

Alvarez also said that he had worked out a story for a potential sequel that would see Ash and Mia team up, noting, “We started writing a sequel [right away] – thinking about what the sequel is going to be. We all agreed it was going to happen. Rodo [Sayagues] and I started thinking about it. We had the full story and then basically, it was strange…the whole intention was to do that, to team [Ash and Mia] up. That was always the goal, but I think Sam had different goals. Sam wanted to have Bruce back for the TV show that came out a few years after that. It was complex to make the movie at the time and whatever mythology we were going to create with them, and it would have been complicated for the show because Sam had his own ideas of what would happen to Ash, and he wanted to tell that story. So that’s why…it [ended up] not happening.”

Finally, Alvarez said that he thought about the idea of having Ash and Mia be related, noting, “We did have a lot of intentions of doing that. And she still might be related. If she is, she doesn’t know. We had a very complex character past for [Mia]. And David. They were siblings but they had different parents – different fathers. So yes, they might be related.”