Sam Raimi has revealed that he's writing Evil Dead 4, and what's more he wants Bruce Campbell to reprise his role in the film. Apparently he and his brother Ivan have already written a number of pages.

It seems that perhaps Evil Dead 4 is going to go ahead, despite all the mixed rumours of a sequel, remake, new cast, musical, handover of franchise, and so on.

Sam Raimi revealed that the nine pages aren't the first nine pages of the script though, it sounds a lot more loose than that.

“We've got nine pages so far. Every time I'm with my brother Ivan, we write another page of it. It's in Detroit and in my garage.

There's some dialogue. Ash being an idiot. Ash taking some abuse. Some character stuff and then some structure of Act Two.

Just other possibilities for things that could happen. It's ideas, jokes, things we'd like to see.”

The comments from Raimi come through Empire and Digital Spy (although like every article they do not provide a link back to the source – I really should stop reading it).

However these don't seem as clear cut as you might think, those nine pages seem to be a mix of ideas, outlines, and a few bits here and there, nothing really concrete. It doesn't sound like they are racing ahead with the story at all and feels like another place holder keeping the fans strung along.

What makes me think that even more is the closing comment that he still wants Bruce Campbell to return to the lead role, something that Campbell himself has been rather reluctant to do, in fact he's said he wouldn't, at all.

What do you think? Is this more “keep the fans interested while we do other stuff” kind of comment, or do you think that Raimi really is trying to get the script for Evil Dead 4 written?