Is Bruce Campbell in ‘Evil Dead Rise’?

It’s been 10 years since we last saw a new Evil Dead film make its way into theaters. It’s been an even longer since we saw Bruce Campbell in his role as Ash on the big screen, with the actor not having appeared in a feature film in the franchise since 1993 in Army of Darkness.

Granted, we did get to see Campbell reprise his role in the television series Ash vs Evil Dead for three gory and spectacular seasons which wrapped up not too long ago (comparatively) in 2018, so when the title and release date of the long awaited fifth movie Evil Dead Rise was announced, surely it meant that Ash would be making a comeback to hack and slash his way across the silver screen once more, right?

Is Bruce Campbell involved with Evil Dead Rise?

Sadly, Bruce Campbell will not be reprising his role as the iconic Ash when Evil Dead Rises releases later this year. The actor is still tied to the film as executive producer, but he has otherwise hung up his chainsaw when it comes to the iconic character. 

For devout fans of the franchise, this shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise. Back in 2021 in an interview with Collider, Campbell confirmed that he had effectively retired from the role of Ash for future Evil Dead projects. Evil Dead Rise will instead introduce a new cast of characters, but will still serve as a sequel to its preceding films. 

That said, Ash won’t be entirely absent from the upcoming film, but bar some sort of big reveal when we see it in cinemas, we won’t be seeing him on screen. Instead, we’ll be getting a little bit of voiceover from Campbell in his role, as he confirmed at San Diego Comic Con last year. Whether it’s narration, a voice from the beyond, or even reused lines from the old movies to use as a bridging device, we’ll have to find out when Evil Dead Rise hits theaters on April 21, 2023.