SHORTY STAR POISED FOR HORROR MOVIE ROLE
Shortland Street star Jayden Daniels is poised to join the walking dead.
Daniels, who also stars in rugby drama Head High, was pictured on actor Mark
Mitchinson’s Instagram post from the set of the movie Evil
Dead Rise. It started filming in Auckland a few weeks ago, and is the fifth movie in The Evil Dead franchise.
The franchise was started in the 1980s by the horror trio Sam Raimi, Robert
Tapert and Bruce Campbell.
In 2013, the fourth movie in the franchise was filmed in New Zealand, led by Tapert — husband of Lucy Lawless.
A follow-up TV series, Ash vs Evil Dead, which starred Campbell as the franchise cult figure Ash Williams, was also filmed in Auckland and screened globally from 2015 to 2018.
Raimi and Campbell are part of the executive producing team and Tapert is the producer of Evil Dead Rise. The director is Lee Cronin, from Ireland, who debuted his supernatural horror film The Hole in the Ground in 2019. Cronin also wrote the screenplay for the latest movie, which will screen on HBO Max next year.
Daniels told Spy he was unable to comment on the role, saying announcements and confirmations had not yet been made by the production company. However, other young stars have been confirmed. They include 9-year-old Nell Fisher from Wellington, who recently filmed Kiwi post-pandemic movie Northspur in Marlborough; young Aussie actor Morgan Davies, who starred alongside Geoffrey Rush in Storm Boy; and US actress Gabrielle Echols.
Although most of the movies in the series revolve around demonic goings-on at a cabin in the woods, the new tale takes the corpses to the city. US media report that Evil Dead Rise tells the story of estranged sisters, played by Aussie actresses
Alyssa Sutherland of Vikings fame and Lily
Sullivan, best known for her role as Coral in Mental, whose reunion is cut short by the rise of fleshpossessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival.