The Saw franchise has been around since 2004, and like the vast majority of long-running horror brands, the law of diminishing returns set in a long time ago. The first installment is still the most fondly-remembered of them all, and brought something different to the genre when graphically-violent ‘torture porn’ was still all the rage, before the series focused more on the elaborate and gruesome traps cooked up by Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw as the main selling point.
Despite there already having been eight Saw movies, with the concept well and truly run into the ground in the process, there’s still a major amount of intrigue surrounding the upcoming ninth entry, due almost entirely to the involvement of Chris Rock. The 54 year-old comedian isn’t exactly the first name that springs to mind when you think of Saw, but not only is he executive producing, he also came up with the idea for the story. And if that wasn’t enough, Rock also plays the main character with none other than Samuel L. Jackson set to co-star.
Diehard fans of the franchise will be thrilled that director Darren Lynn Bousman is returning for the first time since 2007’s Saw IV, but for the vast majority of audiences, the appeal of the latest go-round will be based around the curious notion of Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson entering Jigsaw’s domain.
So far, we don’t know much about what’s being planned for us, but the working title for the project has been The Organ Donor. And while that doesn’t tell us a whole lot, some online sleuths have now found a link to the website for the movie’s Canadian distributor, which lists the official title as Spiral: From the Book of Saw.
That isn’t a title that rolls off the tongue very easily, but it certainly generates a little more mystery about just what somebody who’s spent the last decade as a frequent collaborator with Adam Sandler on terrible comedies has got in store for the ninth outing of a gruesome R-rated horror franchise. In other words, you can color us intrigued.