A conversation with Producer/Director Daniel Stoddart and Graphic Designer Adrian Guerin
When it comes to splattering blood across the stage, Evil Dead The Musical knows how to go big. But in 2026, the team behind the cult sensation wanted to do more than just revive the show, they wanted to reanimate it. That meant fresh key art, a bold new identity, and a visual campaign that would slice through the noise of an extremely full theatrical marketplace, and highly digital world.
The result? An eye-popping explosion of cartoon absurdity, realism, gore, and glossy surrealism. The new look has turned heads and dropped jaws… and it’s no accident.
We sat down with producer/director Daniel Stoddart and renowned graphic designer and illustrator Adrian Guerin to talk about the creative process, the philosophy behind the reboot, and how a piece of artwork becomes a statement of intent.
Q&A with Daniel Stoddart (Producer/Director)
Q: Daniel, when you decided to produce Evil Dead The Musical, what were you looking for in terms of a new visual identity?
Daniel: From the outset, I knew this version of Evil Dead needed to feel like its own beast. Something wild, irreverent, unexpected, but also incredibly polished. The Off-Broadway key art is iconic, but like any strong IP, it can evolve. We’re heading into 2026, a time when posters live less on walls and more on screens. Your branding needs to punch through tiny rectangles on phones as much as it does across theatre foyers. That meant the artwork had to be funny, bold, clear, stylised, and unmistakably alive.
What I didn’t want was something that felt generic, templated, or too slick in a corporate kind of way. I wanted danger. I wanted theatre kids, gorehounds, and digital natives alike to stop scrolling and say, “What is that?” That’s what Adrian gave us.
Q: You’ve described the tone as “cartoon absurdity meets realism.” What does that mean in practice?
Daniel: Right! So that was a huge part of the brief: we didn’t just want a regular cartoon. We wanted something where the comedy lands, but the horror still has bite. I think the quote from my initial brief that Adrian and I kept returning to was that it needed “to look like a video game cover designed by a Pixar animator on crack”. I wanted something with a digitally surreal tone, something that was both elevated and unhinged, and that’s what we kept circling back to.
There’s a lot of artistic license in Evil Dead, so we wanted to reflect that: realistic lighting, high-contrast character rendering, but also ludicrous proportions and grotesque exaggerations. The kind of thing where a chainsaw is bigger than it should be, and the blood splatter feels playfully aggressive. That balance of realism and absurdity was the secret sauce.
Q: How long did the visual development take? Was it a fast turnaround or something more layered?
Daniel: Oh, it was anything but fast. We worked on this for months… months. And that’s why I’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that this is a completely human-made piece of work. In a time when AI can crank out a dozen fake “illustrations” in ten minutes, we deliberately took the long road. What Adrian did here is craft. We wanted every component of the logo and imagery to feel like it was lovingly built with guts and gusto.
Q: Why was it so important to you to commission a professional designer rather than rely on in-house or AI-generated artwork?
Daniel: Because art matters. Because theatre is an artform. And because our audience can tell the difference.
Adrian isn’t just a guy who knows how to use Photoshop. He’s a storyteller. His work carries an exciting energy, full of movement, intention, humour. Every detail in that key art tells a story: the body language, the shadows, even the choice of colour gradients. That doesn’t happen with prompts and plugins. That happens with intuition, with taste, with an understanding of how visuals create narrative.
And as a producer, that’s what I’m selling. We’re not just selling tickets, we’re selling a world. The key art is your handshake with the audience. It sets the tone. It makes a promise. It deserves to be made by someone who understands that.
Q: Has there been any reaction—positive or negative—that surprised you?
Daniel: Oh absolutely. I think we knew the response would be strong, but I’ll admit, I didn’t expect it to be this passionate. Some people are just fully obsessed with it, and others have been like, “Wait, this looks like an animated movie poster.” And honestly, that’s a compliment. It should feel heightened. This isn’t a polite musical. It’s a full-throttle, blood-drenched party. The artwork should feel like it’s screaming at you from across the room… but screaming with talent and skill.
There were a few assumptions early on that it might have been AI-generated, which kind of makes me sad but also proves our point: the level of surrealism and polish is so tight that people thought it had to be artificial. And yet it’s entirely human. That’s the irony. The work was so considered, so detailed, that it tricked a few people into thinking it wasn’t.
But, I think you’ll agree, the work speaks for itself. The amount of time, effort, and creativity poured into this thing is visible in every detail. We’re really proud of it.
Q: What advice would you give to other theatre producers thinking about commissioning key art or branding for a revival?
Daniel: Hire someone great and trust them. That’s it.
Too often, people try to do it all themselves. Or they outsource on the cheap. Or they over-direct the designer. But good key art isn’t just a visual, it’s a vibe. You’re asking someone to visualise a feeling, not just a title. So spend the time upfront. Write a tight brief. Talk about tone. Talk about reference points, sure, but also talk about what you don’t want. Give space for surprise.
With Adrian, we didn’t say “Draw this exact pose with these exact colours.” We talked about mood, about energy, about comedy vs horror. And because we gave him space, he gave us something extraordinary.
Also, remember your artwork is going to live on social media, on buses, on ticketing platforms, on merchandise. It needs to adapt across 50 different contexts. So don’t just think about what looks cool, think about what’s usable. And always, always pay your designers properly. Art isn’t free, and what they bring to your production is invaluable.
Q&A with Adrian Guerin (Multidisciplinary Creative)
Q: Adrian, when you first received the brief for Evil Dead The Musical, what excited you most about the project?
Theatre and photo montage have always been two of my favourite areas to work in, so I’m always excited when these opportunities come my way. What made this one particularly unique was the opportunity to craft an extremely graphic, layered image entirely from scratch. With no logos or visual assets inherited from the existing brand, it was very much a blank canvas from the outset.
Q: What were the key visual inspirations or references you looked at during development?
Poster art from the 1980s, especially within the comedy genre, was a major influence. I gathered lots of visual references from chainsaws and zombies to facial expressions that ranged from terrified and excited to completely unhinged. I also explored ways to represent blood graphically, especially for the post-launch material, which is absolutely drenched in it.
Q: Can you walk us through your workflow and how you built the final composition?
This project was a rare chance to draw on nearly every tool in my creative toolbox, from photography and illustration to image sourcing, photo montage, and art direction. Recently I’ve been learning how to enhance my imagery with AI which has taken my process to another level. Photo montage has always been my favourite discipline ever since the days of scissors and paper. Even though the tech has evolved, the core idea remains the same: piecing together hundreds of images to create something entirely new. What I love most about montage is its raw, surreal quality; something that studio photography, 3D renders, or pure digital illustration can’t fully replicate on their own. It’s the fusion of these approaches that makes the final work so distinctive, and often leaves people guessing how it was made.
Q: What was the most technically challenging part of creating this artwork?
The detailed and graphic nature of the two lead characters made building them a very labour-intensive process. Montages involving human anatomy are particularly unforgiving, so assembling them took time. I’ve learned that accurate lighting and shadows play a crucial role in creating a sense of realism, so I thought it was really important to get that right. One advantage of being a photographer with access to a studio is the ability to create physical setups, allowing me to establish lighting styles and shadow direction to build upon in Photoshop. Subtle touches like the shadow cast over the left side of Cheryl’s body played a big role in achieving the realism we were after.
Because the characters are depicted on stage, the lighting needed to be vivid. This not only helped exaggerate certain features but also allowed a 200 layer composition to read as a cohesive single scene. Depth, proportion, and angle are also critical in photo montage, and a lot of time was spent ensuring those elements were accurate. I must admit, I became a bit fixated at times; the more detailed one area became, the more it pushed me to refine others. Even now, I can still see areas I’d like to tweak, but eventually I had to down tools (otherwise, the show might never have launched).
Q: What role does humour play in your approach to horror design like this?
One of the key challenges was designing a blood and guts poster that still clearly read as satire; after all, the show is a comedy. The exaggerated facial expressions were essential in setting the tone, so getting them right was crucial.
Q: Has working on Evil Dead The Musical changed your approach to any other projects or clients?
This artwork is truly unique in my portfolio; it challenged me to explore a level of technical realism I hadn’t attempted before and opened up new possibilities in my image making process.
Q: What’s your favourite detail in the final artwork imagery?
The secondary elements like the severed hand and zombie hands not only help shape the narrative, but also stand alone as mini artworks when isolated, which has been really fun to explore in the post-launch material. I’m also especially proud of the technical details, particularly the lighting and shadows, as they were so time consuming to perfect but essential to achieving the overall sense of realism.
Q: If you had to describe the final artwork in one sentence—what would it be?
Peak Evil Dead.
Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes looks at the creative team bringing this wild, hilarious, blood-soaked show to life.