Last Statement on EVIL DEAD/WITHIN THE WOODS

Over the course of the week, the news of "Within The Woods" having to be dropped from the upcoming EVIL DEAD: BOOK OF THE DEAD has been announced and like everyone here at Anchor Bay, fans have been very vocal about their disappointment that it won't be present in the release.

However, over the past few days, several incorrect rumors have surfaced and also some misconceptions about this situation. I want to address these now, and hopefully put this to rest and move on. No one is happy about this, least of all Anchor Bay.

Ok...

1. WITHIN THE WOODS has been pulled because of a legal situation which I am not allowed divulge publicly. It was not related to the music issues, which had been cleared. It is a separate matter that was not anticipated and unfortunately cannot be resolved. This means that neither Anchor Bay Entertainment (or anyone else for that matter) will be able to release WITHIN THE WOODS on home video, ever. Delaying our release will not solve this issue. It will not be released by itself or as part of any other EVIL DEAD release. This is not our choice.

2. Related to the above point, many people have suggested that we are holding out on WITHIN THE WOODS to include it later in some other EVIL DEAD DVD or a EVIL DEAD TRILOGY box set. There are no other EVIL DEAD DVDs planned at this time. Also, there will NEVER be a box set with all three films included. Each of the three EVIL DEAD pictures are owned by separate participants which would make a box set highly difficult for a variety of reasons. Disregard any rumors you may read about a a box set. It is not going to happen, ever.

3. The retail price of $49.98 cannot be lowered due to the high cost of the Book of the Dead package. Each of these is a handpainted item (not made of degradable latex, but a high quality rubber material) with nearly 50 pages of printed material inside (Tom Sullivan's drawings & additional booklet). The book alone, without even considering the DVD, has been a very expensive project for us, and we set the retail price as low as we reasonably could. The dropping of the WITHIN THE WOODS, while very disappointing, isn't a viable reason for us to lower the price on this item.

4. Although we had finished our re-mastering of WITHIN THE WOODS, the discs had not yet been manufactured. We were in the final stages of production on the disc when this situation occured. Although the time and expense of altering our final materials is considerable, we fortunately don't have any finished product sitting somewhere that has to be destroyed or recalled.

5. As far as the whole aspect ratio debate goes, all I can say is this. Although the film has been shown on video in full frame all these years, Sam Raimi has always wanted to have the movie released in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85 :1 Of course time and other projects often got in the way. He was finally able to come to us with this desire to see it released in that format, and that is what we have done. We have followed the director's intentions to see it presented on home video as it was presented in theatres. Those of you who get to see THE EVIL DEAD on the big screen over the next several months will be able to attest to the effectiveness of this presentation. We have plans to send restored prints of the film to selected markets over the next several months, and we will announce more information on that when we can.

Hopefully this will help resolve any questions people have understandably had concerning the WITHIN THE WOODS situation. There really isn't anything else I can add except that THE BOOK OF THE DEAD is still due on March 5th, and we are hoping that anyone who may be on the fence about purchasing it, will take a look at it then and consider it.