Evil Dead director Fede Alvarez’s next horror venture, previously titled A Man in the Dark, has cast its two lead roles. Jane Levy, who toplined Alvarez’s Evil reboot as the possessed Mia, has landed the role of a young, imperiled thief, while Stephen Lang will take on the part of a blind man out for blood.
The pic focuses on a trio of teens who execute perfectly planned home robberies. When they break into the home of a reclusive blind man (Lang) for their biggest and final heist, things don’t go as planned and the three wind up fighting for their lives against a psychopath determined to keep his darkest secrets from coming to light.
Dylan Minnette (Prisoners)Â and Daniel Zovatto are already attached to the roles of Levy’s two co-criminals.
Alvarez is re-teaming with his long-time screenwriting partner Rodo Sayagues on the project, which original Evil Dead mastermind Sam Raimi and producer Rob Tapert are producing. Intriguingly, the shoot is planned for both Budapest and Detroit this summer.
Despite the largely positive reception given to Alvarez’s leaner, meaner take on the Evil Dead franchise, released in 2013, plans to develop an Evil Dead 2 with Levy and a separate Army of Darkness 2 to star Bruce Campbell before merging the two narratives in a seventh film fell through. Instead, Campbell is starring in Starz’s Ash Vs. Evil Dead series this fall, which will ignore the characters and plot introduced by Alvarez in Evil Dead (for the time being at least).
However, that Raimi and Tapert are still working with Alvarez, Levy and Sayagues suggests no hard feelings about the change in direction for the Evil Dead franchise.
The currently untitled movie was picked up by Sony at the American Film Market last fall, and it will be released on August 26, 2016.
