What do Furbies, Talkboys,Star Warshotels, andLegends of the Hidden Templehave in common? They’re all no longer in service or production, otherwise known as “discontinued.” On that note, there’s a new series of the same name debuting Thursday on Fubo via Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort Channel.Discontinuedexplores the past eras, products and phenomena that have been taken off the shelves, and in a darkly humorous sort of way, each selection that’s explored on the show becomes a stark reminder, ironically, of why they were so beloved in the first place.
Your host for this new adventure? The iconic “Ash” from those acclaimedEvil Deadfilms, akaBruce Campbell, playing a version of himself reporting from the distant year 2037 to humorous effect. We recently caught up with the veteran actor, author, director, and frequentSam Raimi collaboratorto learn more about his funny new series.
Discontinued: ‘Sorry to Rain on Your Parade’
Next question: What do gin, a soccer team, and a TV channel all have in common? ADeadpoolstar might come to mind since he owns one of each at the moment. “Ryan Reynolds is what you call a go-getter,” said Campbell. “So you want to be aligned, honestly, with people like that, who have a plan and who’s moving forward. So when they asked me about [hostingDiscontinued], I’m like, ‘Yeah, when do I start?'”
Reynolds is surely a hot commodity these days, and Campbell was quick to joke about theFree Guystar’s high-profile nature while detailing how Reynolds’ team contacted him aboutDiscontinued. “They don’t let us talk to Ryan. You can’t make eye contact,” he said. “There are a lot of ‘Ryan Reynolds rules.’ So it was conveyed through four different third parties, through burner phones, that he was happy with the show. That’s that’s all I know.”
Meanwhile, Campbell is no stranger to playing host. “I did a brief stint onRipley’s Believe It or Not, and I’ve hosted a game show,” he said. “So I’m entering the hosting phase of my career. I don’t fight dead guys [inEvil Deadfilms] anymore. I’m in nice, air-conditioned studios.”
Bruce Campbell Gets Discontinued
Millennials will likely watch each upbeat episode of Campbell’s new show with either a smile or smirk slapped across their face. It might just be a happy accident thatDiscontinueddebuts on a Thursday, aka “Throwback Thursday,” with many of the vintage products featured on the show likely to illicit a reaction in the vein of, “Aw man, I remember those!” Says Campbell:
“Sorry to rain on your parade and all your discontinued stuff. But people try all kinds of stuff, and not everything takes. Even big corporations like Disney have miserable failures because they don’t always know what people want. That’s the hilarious part about show business. You don’t know. That movie could be Star Wars, or it could be some horrible bomb.”
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And just like show business,Discontinuedis “hilarious” in nature, thanks to Campbell’s deadpan-comedy introductions to segments that cut away to equally funny correspondents out in the field. “What makes me laugh is emerging technology. We were dealing with a lot of devices that failed: Furbies, talking creatures, talking robots. And they were always on the verge of collapse and failure the whole time,” said Campbell, who added:
And so it’s kind of nice to see technology’s gone way further, because the stuff that we’re talking about, how it’s discontinued, I think it was discontinued for this reason: They weren’t quite ready for primetime. And so it’s fun to see the emerging technology and how corporations try and sell it. They’ve tried to make a doll talk forever, so it’s fun to see it come and go.
Another example of a hip product that ultimatelycrashed and burned is the BlackBerrry, which is featured heavily in the show’s pilot episode. “The BlackBerry was an example of a device that, in its day, was very advanced, and then it didn’t really change,” Campbell told us. “My agent, to this day, is crying about how there’s no more BlackBerry.”
We had to ask if there’s a particular throwback item that hasn’t been featured onDiscontinuedyet, that Campbell would like to see explored. “I was born the year of the Edsel 1958. That’s a long time ago. They put a car out there that was named after Henry Ford’s son Edsel,” said Campbell. “The Edsel, if you look at it, a nice-looking old car, but it bombed. And it was named after Henry Ford — they thought it was an absolute slam dunk. So you never know.”
Sam Raimi and ‘Staying Involved’ withEvil Dead
In terms of Campbell’s big-screen career, cinephiles are probably well-versed in his plethora ofcameos in Sam Raimi’s filmsover the years, dating back to the originalSpider-Manfilm trilogy and continuing with the latestDoctor Strangeinstallment. “Sam’s one of the good ones these days,” said Campbell. “The trick is just to pick the stuff that looks like fun. I think he did a great job withDoctor Strange, and it’s always fun to come in and torture the lead guy. And let’s not forget, I put an end to Doctor Strange. Let’s never forget that… Watch the post-credit sequence. It will tell you everything you need to know.”
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And of course, who can forget Ash from the first fewEvil Deadfilms and the acclaimed spin-off series? Even if you don’t see Campbell in the recentEvil Dead Rise, that doesn’t mean he’s done with the franchise. “I’ve remained a producer, and was one of the producers on the recent one, which made the most money of anyEvil Deadmovie ever made,” Campbell told us. “So I’ll always stay involved as a producer. But as an actor, the old chainsaw has been hung up.”
Southern California residents may have also spotted the Ash character in-person at Universal Studios' annual Halloween Horror Nights a few years back. “That was a lot of fun,” said Campbell. “That was Ash’s swan song. It was his last hey-day, his last hurrah.”
And looking ahead, even if “the chainsaw is hung up,” Campbell remains busy both in front of the camera and as a writer:
“I’m going to make a new movie in the spring in my lovely state of Oregon. It’s time to make movies again. The old days, me and Sam Raimi and Rob Tapper, we kind of make movies the handmade way. And I’ve been an actor for hire for a long time, and I’m a producer for hire, and it’s time to just go back and make cool little movies. Again, it’s way easier now to make low-budget movies with the equipment and all that sort of stuff. So I’m rolling up the sleeves and getting back at it.”
“And I’ve just started publishing myself. I did three bestsellers through a regular publisher,” added Campbell. “Now, I’m doing what everybody can do. I’m publishing my own stuff. So that’s been fun to take a lot of projects that will never get made as a movie, because movies are expensive and hard to put together. Put them out as a book — why not?”
Why not indeed? In the meantime,Discontinuedwill debut Thursday, Nov. 30 on Fubo via the Maximum Effort Channel.
