While everyone hangs around wondering whether director Sam Raimi will show up to do a fourth Spider-Man movie, rumors have started circulating which indicate that he could switch to working on a different franchise instead. The guys over at Moviehole have picked up a story from The Herald Sun which says that Evil Dead 4 might be one of his next tasks.

The news comes directly from Raimi, who told them that Bruce Campbell may have to dust off his boomstick because he’s trying to convince his brother Ivan Raimi to write a screenplay on a new sequel to his snarky classic horror series. Ivan co-wrote the screenplay for the third Dead movie Army of Darkness and Raimi says, “we have been talking about another one, but we haven't started work on it.”

If Sam Raimi actually said it, it’s kind of hard to dismiss this as just another lame Evil Dead 4 rumor. But I wonder if perhaps this is the sort of thing he might drop in the press, just to spice things up for his impending Spider-Man 4 contract negotiations with Sony? It wouldn’t be the first time someone dangled a phantom alternate project just to get a studio to up their quote.