James Wan helped to create one of the best horror movies of this century when bringing Saw to screens in 2004. While Wan has not been actively involved in the franchise since its third installment – the one where many people felt the story of John Kramer should have ended – that will all change when the franchise returns for its 11th movie.
Although the Saw franchise appeared to have finally run its bloody course when Saw 3D brought things to a less than impressive close, Jigsaw followed several years later to a middling response. In 2021, Spiral: From the Book of Saw took things in a different direction, with Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson appearing in a Saw movie that was not a Saw movie, and in 2023 Tobin Bell was back as John Kramer in a story that takes place between Saw and Saw II.
Saw X became a global hit and one of the highest rated movies of the franchise, meaning a sequel was very quickly added to the Lionsgate slate. However, early in 2025, it seemed that the project had been canceled, only for it to be saved by Jason Blum as Blumhouse closed a deal for the rights to the franchise. This is where James Wan came back into the picture. Now, it looks like Saw is back in the hands of its creators, and Wan knows exactly what he wants to do with the next movie.
James Wan Wants To Make ‘Saw’ Scary Again
John Kramer, played by Tobin Bell, in 2023 horror film Saw XLionsgate Films
By the time Saw IV and beyond came out, the phrase “torture porn” had been written in big letters across the franchise, which saw the franchise take a battering with critics as the goriness and elaborate nature of the traps became more of a focus than the story. Saw X changed this, with Tobin Bell masterfully returning to the role of Kramer and bringing something more back to the franchise. Now James Wan wants to get back to basics. Speaking to Letterbox’d, he said:
“For me to finally come back to it, I feel I have probably the freshest outlook. I feel I can come back to it with a new perspective whilst knowing that with this next movie I want to hark back to the spirit of the first movie. One of the things I really want to do with this next Saw is make it scary again. I want to make a scary Saw—not just gory, but psychologically scarring, like what Leigh and I did in the first movie.”
Wan continued to add that going back to the original movie and the original message of John Kramer is where he sees the new film finding its feet. Sharing his view on how the movie can succeed, especially with new audiences, Wan said:
“Leigh and I both want to recapture the spirit of that first film and revisit Jigsaw’s philosophy, which is that he goes after people who don’t appreciate their lives. If you’re a scumbag, but you appreciate your life, he doesn’t see you as someone who’s wasting your life, so I want to go back to what we touched on in the first movie with regard to that. At the same time, I want to honor what people have come to love about the franchise, whilst trying to do something fresh and new that we haven’t seen before. This next movie would be the eleventh installment, and there’ve been lots of films in this world. We need to do something different in order to reach out to a new generation that didn’t grow up with it.”