Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi are both involved as producers, though Fede Alvarez is the director. The Ash character is replaced by a female lead, which I think is a pretty good idea. I think that having a male lead trying to play Ash would have been a mistake because it would just draw too many comparisons with Campbell in the original movies, and I think creating a little distance will be beneficial to the new movie's reception.
My only problem is that they showed the group having a dog in the trailer, and I hate when horror movies feature animal mutilation. For whatever reason, you can do pretty much whatever to the human characters, but touch the family mutt and I can't watch.
I think it'd be awesome if they basically keep this and Ash's stories separate, and in a future movie have whoever survives this meet up with an older Ash, and not just as a cameo.