Sam Raimi is reflecting on the moment that changed everything for him. While promoting his upcoming film Send Help, the director spoke with CinemaBlend about Stephen King’s early support and how it helped launch his career when Evil Dead struggled to gain traction.
'(King) gave me my chance in the business,' Raimi says. 'Nobody would touch Evil Dead with a 10 foot plague pole.'
According to Raimi, Evil Dead initially faced resistance, with studios hesitant to touch the film at all. That changed when King happened to see it while Raimi was in Cannes promoting the movie. King later praised Evil Dead in the genre-defining Twilight Zone magazine. King was his hero then, and Raimi said he remains one of his greatest influences today.
The conversation turned to comparisons between Send Help and the film adaptation of King's Misery, a connection Raimi understands but doesn’t fully embrace. King’s influence on his work, he acknowledged, has always been significant. More than that, Raimi credited King with giving him his first real opportunity in the industry at a time when few others were willing to take a chance.
www.youtube.com/shorts/4qAAxf3CLfY
Send Help's setup (a clashing man and woman stranded in an isolated location) makes the Misery comparisons understandable, but Raimi said he actively tried to avoid them while developing Send Help. He spoke warmly about King’s novel, Rob Reiner’s film adaptation, and Kathy Bates’ performance, calling them classics. Still, when early coverage framed Send Help as a blend of Misery and Cast Away, Raimi became concerned about the project being defined too narrowly.
To avoid that, he made a deliberate creative decision. Raimi chose not to watch either film during development, despite being very familiar with both. Instead, he worked closely with the writers to push the story in different directions, aiming to give Send Help its own identity rather than echoing earlier works.
That instinct to chart his own course has shaped much of Raimi’s career since those early days. After Evil Dead became a cult genre hit, he went on to direct studio hits like Darkman, the Spider-Man trilogy starring Tobey Maguire, and later Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, helping define the visual language of modern comic book movies along the way. Even as his scale grew, Raimi continued returning to genre storytelling.
Related: Liam Neeson’s ’90s Cult Classic Is Officially Getting a Sequel
Whether Send Help fully escapes familiar comparisons remains to be seen, Raimi admitted, but the intention was always clear. He wanted the movie to stand on its own. Decades later, he still traces his path back to that early moment of recognition from Stephen King, a reminder of how support at the right time can help shape an entire career.
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