Best known for his stint as Ash in The Evil Dead series (and playing himself in the more recent movie My Name is Bruce) Bruce Campbell can regularly be seen playing the hero’s sidekick in Burn Notice; a TV show about a reluctantly retired secret agent, who spends his time trying to clear his name, and scrape out a living, by taking work as a private investigator in Miami; and now, not only has a Burn Notice movie been announced, it appears as though Bruce Campbell will be playing the lead.
Campbell portrays an ex-Navy SEAL in the show, who’s semi-retired, and spend his days lounging around Miami in a Hawaiian shirt, drinking womanizing, and regularly providing his ex-secret agents buddies with help in gunfights, burglary, creating explosives, or by providing any number of other nefarious but useful skills, but the Burn Notice movie (which was talked about earlier this year at Comic Con, yet has only just been officially greenlit) will actually be a prequel to the series, focussing on Bruce’s (or Sam Axe as he’s known in the series) SEAL days
Previously referred to as ‘the greatest B-movie actor of all time’, Bruce’s planned lead role will not see him breaking mainstream ground; as the film (which is due to be directed by Burn Notice star Jeffrey Donovan; who plays series lead Michael in the show) will be a TV movie, and will be unlikely to receive any kind of widespread release.
USA Network’s President; Jeff Wachtel; noted that Bruce’s appearance at last year’s Comic Con saw the masses adoring him as if he was “the Bruce Springsteen of Comic Con”, by giving him a “spectacular, explosive, fan reaction” to his appearance, which helped them to realize that Bruce is “not only a great actor, but a pop culture icon”, and that making a movie with him as the lead was a no brainer.
Still untitled, the film is due to be shot during the gap between seasons four and five of the show, and will focus specifically on Axe’s final mission as a SEAL; involving him combating a faction of Colombian rebels, who are up to no good; and while this means that (for now) Bruce will have no time to shoot the sequel to My Name is Bruce (Bruce Vs. Frankenstein) until the next season break, there could be more Bruce-based Burn Notice movies in the works, as while Jeff Wachtel has said that this venture is currently a “one-off”, when asked about the possibility of releasing more films, or a spin-off show, said simply; “we’ll see how it goes.”
