Sam Raimi

Samuel Marshall Raimi (/ˈreɪmi/ RAY-mee; born October 23, 1959) is an American filmmaker. He is best known for directing the first three films in the Evil Dead franchise (1981–present) and the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007). He also directed the superhero movie Darkman (1990), the revisionist western The Quick and the Dead (1995), the neo-noir crime thriller A Simple Plan (1998), the supernatural thriller The Gift (2000), the supernatural horror Drag Me to Hell (2009), the Disney fantasy Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), and the Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

His films are known for their highly dynamic visual style, inspired by comic books and slapstick comedy. He founded the production companies Renaissance Pictures in 1979 and Ghost House Pictures in 2002. Raimi has also produced several successful television series, including Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, its spin-off Xena: Warrior Princess, and Ash vs Evil Dead starring longtime friend and collaborator Bruce Campbell reprising his role in the Evil Dead franchise.

Raimi was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, to a Conservative Jewish family. He is a son of merchants Celia Barbara (née Abrams) and Leonard Ronald Raimi. His ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Hungary. His younger brother Ted is an actor, and his older brother Ivan is a screenwriter and physician. His older sister, Andrea Raimi Rubin, is a court reporter. Another older brother, Sander, died at 15 in an accidental drowning in Israel; Raimi has said that the trauma knitted the remaining family closer together and "colored everything he's done for the rest of his life." Raimi also mentioned that Sander first introduced him to Spider-Man, igniting his love for comics.

Raimi graduated from Groves High School and later went on to attend Michigan State University and later Università Bocconi in Milan, Italy, where he studied English but left after three semesters to film The Evil Dead.

Raimi became fascinated with making films when his father brought a movie camera home one day. He began to make Super 8 movies with his friend Bruce Campbell, whom he met in 1975. In college, he collaborated with his brother's roommate Robert Tapert and Campbell to shoot Within the Woods (1978), a 32-minute horror film which raised $375,000, as well as his debut feature film It's Murder!. During that time, he also shot the seven-minute short film Clockwork (1978), starring Scott Spiegel (who had appeared in Within the Woods) and Cheryl Guttridge. Through family, friends, and a network of investors, Raimi was able to finance production of the highly successful horror film The Evil Dead (1981), which became a cult hit and effectively launched Raimi's career.

He began work on his third film Crimewave (1985), which he co-wrote with the then-unknown Coen brothers, shortly after. Intended as a live-action comic book, the film was unsuccessful, partly due to unwanted studio intervention. Raimi then returned to the horror genre with the seminal Evil Dead II (which added slapstick humor to the over-the-top horror, showcasing his love of the Three Stooges). With his brother Ivan Raimi (and crediting himself as Celia Abrams), Sam Raimi also wrote Easy Wheels (1989), which parodied the Outlaw biker film genre. A long-time comic book buff, he then attempted to adapt "The Shadow" into a movie but was unable to secure the rights, so he created his own superhero, Darkman (1990). The film was his first major studio picture, and was commercially successful, spawning two sequels. Through it he was still able to secure funding for Evil Dead III, which was retitled Army of Darkness and largely steered away from horror towards fantasy and comedy elements. Army of Darkness, the final movie in the Evil Dead trilogy, commercially underperformed, yet on video became a cult classic.

In the 1990s, Raimi moved into other genres, directing such films as the western The Quick and the Dead (starring Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman), the critically acclaimed crime thriller A Simple Plan (1998) (starring Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton), and the romantic drama For Love of the Game (1999) (starring Kevin Costner).

Raimi has frequently collaborated with Joel and Ethan Coen, beginning when Joel was one of the editors of Evil Dead. The Coens co-wrote Crimewave and The Hudsucker Proxy with Raimi in the mid-1980s (though Hudsucker was not produced for almost a decade). Raimi made cameo appearances in Miller's Crossing, The Hudsucker Proxy, and with Joel Coen in Spies Like Us. The Coen brothers gave Raimi advice on shooting in snow for A Simple Plan, based on their experiences with Fargo.