Diablo Cody talks Evil Dead Remake

When the remake of The Evil Dead was officially announced, one of the biggest complaints was regarding the news that Diablo Cody was brought on board to polish the script originally written by director Fede Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues. That's why Cody has been defending herself in a number of recent interviews and assuring fans that she wasn't brought in to make the movie more accessible to a general audience:

"It was really important again to the filmmakers that it remain totally grounded in reality and timeless. They weren't trying to make some hip trendy horror movie full of pop culture references. I really hope people don't think that that's what I was hired to do... I came in and worked on characters and relationships, things like that."

This is somewhat similar to what she said in an interview earlier this month: "I know, honestly I was so excited to do it. I wouldn’t have even gotten involved if Sam [Raimi] and Bruce Campbell hadn’t been involved as well, they’re producing it, and so of course I was like 'Alright I have to do this' because I’m such a fan of the original, and the whole original series in fact. But I was nervous to take the job because I thought 'Ugh, I’m gonna get shit for this. People are not gonna like this, because all people know of me is like Juno and they think I’m gonna pollute Evil Dead with like wacky dialogue and cute stuff and folk music', and it’s like 'No, look I understand what this is. I’m interested in storytelling here and making it scary and good and true to the original.'..."

While it's understandable that fans are protective of the property, this seems like more of a general fan frustration with the project and less about Diablo Cody. She's just the only new person working on the project that fans are familiar with, as opposed to Fede Alvarez, whose work is relatively unknown.

While most fans would probably rather see a sequel, Bruce Campbell recently talked about their reasons for remaking the film and the reason why they are not going to recast Ash:

“We are going to remake it, the original, and people are a little iffy about that. We wanted to remake a movie that would have better effects… we’re better at telling stories now… There’s no Ash character in it… that pisses people off… we didn’t want to have the direct comparison… I wouldn’t want to put an actor in that position.”