Blumhouse is in talks to acquire the rights to Twisted Pictures’ portion of the “Saw” horror film franchise, according to media reports.
Lionsgate owns 50% of the franchise and will continue to be involved as a partner. The studio has the distributed the films dating back to the release of the first “Saw” in 2004.
James Wan directed the first “Saw” film and co-wrote the script with Leigh Whannell. Should the deal go through, it would restore partial control of the franchise to Wan.
Wan and Whannell’s “Saw” offered a deceptively simple premise of two desperate men chained together in an empty room with little idea of how they got there or how to get out.
Starring Cary Elwes and Danny Glover, Monica Potter and a pre-“Lost” Michael Emerson, “Saw” inspired a new wave of grindhouse horror, films that reveled in old-school gore and a certain Rube Goldberg mentality to the kills beyond just attractive teenagers being picked off one by one.
Its grindhouse mentality and ruthless brutality personified the post-9/11 decade in horror, just as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Last House on the Left” spoke to a generation ravaged by participating in or witnessing the real-life carnage of the Vietnam War. It gave Hollywood its first new iconic onscreen boogie man since “Scream”s Ghostface or – since it was a different murderer every time in those films — Tony Todd’s Candyman.
The last film in the franchise, “Saw X” was released in 2023 and earned $112.2 million worldwide. Earlier this year, Lionsgate has pulled “Saw XI” from its release slate.
Deadline first reported the news.
