If you were hoping to see Evil Dead’s boomstick-toting Ash Williams outside the confines of Evil Dead: The Game, you might have to fight Bruce Campbell about it. In a chat with The AV Club (spotted by TheGamer), the long-time Ash actor shot down the notion of the character putting in an appearance in Mortal Kombat 12—or any other non-Evil Dead game, for that matter—saying that characters from other series ought to be coming over to Evil Dead, instead.
“No, I don’t want Ash to appear in other people’s games,” the star said during the interview, “Other creatures like Freddy and Jason should be in the Evil Dead game”. He went on to say that “You should be able to play as Freddy. You should be able to play as Jason and then have Ash fight those guys … that’s what I would do”.
Just in case you missed his point, he reiterated that he’s “not interested in loaning Ash out. They need to come to our house”.
Ash has been a rumoured character for the Mortal Kombat series for a while now. Back in 2019, trailers for MK11 seemed to hint at the hero putting in some kind of appearance, but it never amounted to anything.
When he was asked about that at the time, Campbell said “Characters are kinda owned by companies, including Ash … it gets weird sometimes, so it might not happen because of legal crap”. But Evil Dead: The Game has come out since then, and it’s not exactly strange that Campbell would much rather other people come over to his thing. It seems fairly unlikely to me he’ll get his way in the long run, though. As beloved a character as Ash Williams is, I’m not sure he carries quite the clout necessary to call the shots like that.
Of course, characters are still owned by corporations, not actors, and Campbell himself noted in his chat with the AV Club that those kinds of deals are the domain of games companies themselves. I should think that if the company that owns the rights to Ash Williams smells money in it, the hero will make the jump over to MK12 lickety-split. It just might not be with Campbell’s blessing.
As for that Evil Dead game? It’s pretty good, and it actually got its Steam release today. In his Evil Dead: The Game review, Luke Winkie scored it 85%, and called it “one of the true left-field sleepers of 2022”.