That's basically my point too
In Halloween, TCM, Elm St, Friday, Saw, etc you have a cast of deadmeat cannon fodder. The protagonists don't matter.
In Evil Dead proper, aka not the remake (I think this newest one will be cannon), the deadlines are really going after one person for the most part. Army of Darkness has hundreds of background nobody's and a couple other significant characters, but it's still a different beast.
The deadlines are so generic except for the girlfriend, basement person, Evil Ash (again, there's Ash), etc that it's not worth paying for the IP rights if you aren't going to use the sole character most people are familiar with.
It's like the rope-a-dope people were worried about with Halloween 3 and blow back from the lack of Michael in the house.
But my feelings will all be for nothing if the movie is awesome, talks about that crazy S-Mart employee who claimed the dead were after him before he disappeared, and have some signature deadites that can be used in the house. If the movie carries on the story and has some signature baddies, then it should be awesome. But an Evil Dead movie without a boom stick and chainsaw hand, doesn't seem like an Evil Dead movie to me. That's like a Nightmare on Elm St without a glove. A Star Wars without a Lightsaber. An Indiana Jones without a whip. A TCM without a chainsaw.
And if this new one does something stupid like have the main character lose her arm and find a chainsaw and double barrel shotgun in a city apartment building, that's beyond ridiculous.