Evil Dead Rise originally featured a deadite cat

gamesradar.com:

Warning! This article contains spoilers for Evil Dead Rise. If you've yet to see the movie and you don't want to know anything that happens, turn back now.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that Evil Dead Rise is a blood-drenched gorefest and, as is common with the long-running franchise, barely any of the characters make it out alive. When writing the script, director Lee Cronin let his imagination run wild, but there were a couple of lines he figured he shouldn't cross – and one of them was killing the cat.

In a new interview with Total Film and GamesRadar+, the filmmaker revealed that earlier versions of the flick weren't so forgiving to the feline, whose off-screen air duct-scampering antics are mentioned early in the final cut. In fact, one saw it being devoured by possessed baddie Ellie, and another had it turn into a deadite.

"It was written. Oh, it was written where you actually see [Ellie] crawling through the [vent] and she's finishing off the cat, just swallowing the tail," Cronin tells us. "Then there was... but our budget never allowed this... I wanted – you know the hatch that opens in the back of Danny's bedroom – I wanted Kassie and Beth to escape that way. You think things are getting to safety, and then they come across a deadite cat.

"Ultimately, though, the thing I've learned is that people fucking hate if you do anything to animals. It literally turns people off your movie. Someone asked a question in a Q&A the other night and they cheered when I said the cat survived. The entire audience cheered. I actually chose the take of the cat running away just to make clear that it got away."

Starring Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland, Evil Dead Rise centers on sisters Beth and Ellie, whose strained