Here’s hoping you are having a wonderful holiday season, horror friends. We’ve got some cool Evil Dead and The Walking Dead news, plus a new horror novel on its way in 2015 gets optioned by Legendary Pictures. Let’s get to this weeks “Horror Happenings!”

Bruce Campbell Talks Ash vs. Evil Dead, Horror In General

Bruce Campbell, Ash to all the Evil Dead fans in the room, spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the upcoming Ash vs. Evil Dead series scheduled to air ten episodes on Starz later this year. Campbell gave a lot of information including promising “the old fashioned splatstick-horror and comedy” and provided insight into additional characters in the series saying, “It’s a threesome, which is a good number. Since it’s not cast yet, it would be silly to fully describe them. But they’re supposed to be two very good counterparts. One is a male-bonding situation; the other is father-figure deal, since Ash could have a daughter the same age as this character. Hopefully we’ll pull Ash out of his loner-veteran mode and get him back into being a human being again.”

Campbell also discussed the tone of the series explaining, “There’s jokey horror and horror-horror. When there’s a presence in the room, it has to be dealt with because it’s an extremely dangerous and volatile situation. Humor may come out of it, but there’s nothing funny about a demon ripping somebody’s head off. And the beauty of Starz is there’s no content issues. Let’s face it: Fans want the carnage and the mayhem. So we intend to give them quite the explosion of viscera. Most of it directed at me, unfortunately.”

It’s a great interview and a must-read for all the Evil Dead fans out there! While normally I would be a little hesitant about a property being resurrected so far after the fact, everything about Ash vs. Evil Dead sounds like a complete slam dunk. I cannot wait for this show to come out!

Gone Girl Actress Kim Dickens Lands Female Lead Role in Walking Dead Spin-Off Series Cobalt

TV spin-off shows are often hard to do well. For every Fraiser that comes from Cheers, there are a many more Joey‘s that come from Friends. That said, the AMC network is taking the idea of the spin-off series very seriously with both Better Call Saul and Cobalt in the works. The unofficially titled Cobalt is the companion to The Walking Dead, the genre ratings juggernaut that seems to be stronger than ever this season. The show has just announced that they have cast Gone Girl actress Kim Dickens as the female lead of the series. She joins a cast that includes Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam Carey. We also know that Cobalt will take place in Los Angeles.

I’m thrilled at the addition of Dickens to the cast. I thought she was excellent in Gone Girl playing Detective Rhonda Boney and can’t wait to see her battling the undead every week. How about you? Are you excited for Cobalt at all? How about the casting of Dickens? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Legendary Pictures Takes Horror Seriously, Options Novel The Damned From Andrew Pyper

The Damned, which is the new novel from The Demonologist scribe Andrew Pyper that’s due out in February 2015, has been optioned by Legendary Pictures for a feature film adaptation, Variety is reporting. The novel centers around a pair of brother-sister twins involved in a terrible fire that ultimately claims the life of the sister, who then proceeds to haunt her brother well after her death. Variety describes the story as “an elevated supernatural thriller in the vein of The Sixth Sense and Jacob’s Ladder.” Legendary has Crimson Peak from horror master Guillermo del Toro due out in 2015 as well.