Rob Tapert's trade is keeping The Evil Dead alive by handing it to someone new each time, and the trick has held for forty-odd years with one recent wobble. The show he created himself, Xena: Warrior Princess, is the one with the most of him in it.
Fi1m perspective
The first thing anyone notices about The Evil Dead (1983) is the camera, which does things no camera had done before, in a film that is otherwise crude, badly acted and made on almost nothing. Sam Raimi did that. Bruce Campbell was on the receiving end of it. Rob Tapert, who had met the pair at Michigan State while studying economics, produced it, and has in one way or another gone on producing it ever since. A producer's work is invisible when done well; the way to see Tapert is to look at what has stayed standing around him for four decades.
The early answer is the partnership. Evil Dead II (1987) made gore funny without making it harmless, and it remains the best thing with his name on it. Timecop (1994) is darker and better built than anything else Jean-Claude Van Damme has fronted, provided you do not inspect the plot. Then came the turn, and it was to television. He co-created and produced Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and from it he and John Schulian spun Xena: Warrior Princess, which began on 4 September 1995 and ran six seasons, with Tapert writing and directing episodes himself. Spartacus (2010) and Ash vs Evil Dead (2015–2018) followed. Since founding Ghost House Pictures in 2002 he has mostly run the cabin as a landlord, letting it to new tenants.
That is his method, and he has said as much: "We like to get a young voice and a new take for the franchise, and I think that has allowed Sam and me to keep the films fresh and original." Fede Álvarez got Evil Dead (2013) and then Don't Breathe (2016). Lee Cronin got Evil Dead Rise (2023), moved it into a condemned block of flats and made something lean, loud and horribly efficient, and rather less fun than it thought. Sébastien Vaniček got Evil Dead Burn (2026) and made the cruellest film to carry the name and, for long stretches, the least enjoyable. Our scores for the series run 77, 86, 72, 55. Each new hand has kept the blood and lost a little more of the joke, and the joke was always Raimi's and Campbell's, which is the one thing a producer cannot hire in.
Which is why Xena matters more than its wigs suggest. It was plainly built as Hercules with a taller lead and a different chest plate, and that is what the fights deliver. What surprised us, and went on surprising us across 134 episodes, was how much of it is Lucy Lawless and Renée O'Connor talking round a campfire, and how sincerely the show believed in the friendship. We came for the swordplay and were moved by the sitting down. It is the one piece of Tapert's work he shaped from the inside, and it is the warmest.
The next Evil Dead will go to someone new; he has said so. We would only ask that whoever it is be allowed a laugh.
Biography
Robert Tapert is an American film and television producer. Born on 14 May 1955 in Royal Oak, Michigan, he studied economics at Michigan State University. There he met Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, with whom he later collaborated on short films and his first feature, The Evil Dead (1981).
Tapert has produced or executive produced multiple entries in the Evil Dead franchise, including Evil Dead II (1987), Army of Darkness (1992), the 2013 remake, Evil Dead Rise (2023) and Evil Dead Burn (2026). He co-founded Ghost House Pictures in 2002 and has credits on films such as The Grudge (2004), Drag Me to Hell (2009) and Don't Breathe (2016).
He co-created the television series Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001) and worked on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Tapert has been married to actress Lucy Lawless since 1998.
