Evil Dead Reboot Loses Lily Collins
Posted 01.25.12 by BrentJS
The Evil Dead reboot isn't even in production yet and the "deadites" have already claimed their first victim. According to a tweet from Variety reporter Jeff Sneider, Lily Collins (The Mortal Instruments), the 22-year-old actress who will next appear on screen playing Snow White opposite Julia Roberts's Evil Queen in Mirror, Mirror and who was supposed to play the lead character of Mia in Evil Dead, has dropped out of the reboot "due to a scheduling issue."
The loss of Collins is a pretty big blow to the production, which has already come under fire from the die-hard fans who helped to make the original Evil Dead series directed by Sam Raimi a cult phenomenon and turned
Bruce Campbell into the king of B movies. Complaints include the addition of a drug addiction subplot into what is otherwise the same set-up as the original movie — "Five twenty-something friends become holed up in a remote cabin where they discover a Book Of The Dead and unwittingly summon up dormant demons living in the nearby woods, which possess the youngsters in succession until only one is left intact to fight for survival." — the lack of the character of Ash (Campbell in the originals) and the hiring of Academy Award–winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) to rewrite the script.
With Evil Dead scheduled to go into production in New Zealand in March under the direction of independent filmmaker Federico "Fede" Alvarez of Uruguay, the pressure will be on to not only replace Collins as Mia, but to find four young actors to play the rest of the cast of characters that supposedly includes a mechanic named David and his fiancé Natalie, a nurse named Olivia, and Eric, "the kid who unleashes the demons." Sony Pictures will distribute the reboot and has slated it for a April 12, 2013 theatrical release.