[IMG:L]Nobody wants to jump into a pile of needles in search of an antidote or saw off their own leg to escape chains, but for some reason we love to watch other people do it. Saw is now one of the most lucrative franchises in horror history and at a steady rate of one per year since 2004 the series could top Freddy and Jason combined.
With a fourth installment on the way, the film continues the twisted story of Jigsaw, a terminal cancer patient disgusted with people who waste their lives. His victims can earn their freedom, but only if they perform his gruesome tasks like cutting out their own eyes.
Hollywood.com caught up with star Tobin Bell and filmmakers Darren Lynn Bousman, Mark Burg and Oren Koules to find out more about their highly anticipated sequel, set to open this October.
Jigsaw Returns: Death never stopped a slasher from coming back for sequels, but Saw IV is a little bit more realistic than that. Actor Tobin Bell confirmed his involvement in the sequel, but would not explain further. “All I can tell you is that you’ll find out [how I’m back] in the very first scene in the film,” he explained. Producer Mark Burg back’s up his story saying “Tobin is dead. We don’t jump the shark. It’s not his twin brother. All I will tell you is yes, he’s dead and yes, he’s in the movie. It’s exciting.”
Killer Ending: Saw had a twist ending that put M. Night Shyamalan to shame. Saw II even managed to surprise fans who already knew they should be looking for clues along the way. Saw III went with more of an emotional punch, but director Darren Lynn Bousman promises Saw IV is back to the jaw dropping twist.”When I first read it, I was on page 85 but I didn’t feel any way about it,” he recalled. “I wasn’t pissed or excited really until I got to page 87. When I hit page 87, I was like ‘God damn it, they got me! I’ve fucking done this for the last three years and they got me.’”
New Blood: Since most of Jigsaw’s guinea pigs don’t pass his tests (these movies do have high body counts), each sequel has to introduce new victi- – uh, characters. Gilmore Girls‘ Scott Patterson plays one of Jigsaw’s targets, and wrote much of his character himself. “The first day he shows up, he says, ‘I’m going to do something a little different here,’ Bousman said. “And I’m like, ‘Alright.’ We yell ‘action’ and all of a sudden he started improvising and it was gold. It was like the best stuff I’d ever seen and he’s insane. It really works well for his character considering we haven’t seen him in a Saw film before. There’s a whole new life to this one which is exciting.”
[IMG:R]Building Better Mousetraps: You can be all highfalutin about the philosophical concepts of Saw, the mystery and the acting, but it’s not Saw without some truly awful, torturous traps. Nobody’s giving away the gory details, but suffice it to say, these evil geniuses haven’t run out of ideas. They’re even enough to make producer James Wan cringe, and he was the original Saw director. “One of the traps, James said he almost fainted when he imagined it,” fellow producer Oren Koules teased.
Meeting Demand: “There are a lot of things that people can relate to in the Saw films,” Bousman said. “I hate to call them gimmicks but there are a lot of things people come to expect with the twists, the trap, the puppet, the Jigsaw soliloquy. There are all these things that, love or hate it, you know you’re going to get when you go into a Saw film.”
Bragging Rights: Just for existing, Saw IV sets a new precedent. No other franchise has done four in a row. “Some of the Halloweens did three in a row but they never were able to do four in a row, and we wanted to do it,” Burg said. “There is a lot of internal satisfaction amongst Darren, Oren, myself and the people at Lionsgate that we pulled off a fourth movie which is suspenseful as heck, scary as heck and such a good storyline that we had to come up with a way of how to continue the franchise when everyone knows Jigsaw is dead.”
Jigsaw’s Not So Scary: Bell is a little league coach for his 11-year-old son’s team and a sober family man for the past 25 years. If you run into him on the street, he’d love to talk to you about baseball. But because Saw is so popular, he can’t help freaking people out. “It happened in Toronto at night,” Bell recalled. “I left the hotel, put on my hoodie, which was a big mistake. I ran down to a little restaurant to get an arugula salad to bring back to the hotel room. The bar was empty. The bartendress was just kind of closing…I went to the end, she came down and said, ‘Can I help- -‘ That’s as far as she got. And she said, ‘Oh my God, oh no, oh no. I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight,’ backing away in horror. [I said], ‘No, no, no, it’s just a movie. Look, here, look, here.’ We became friends and I see her all the time when I’m in Toronto. She introduced me to all her pals.”
[IMG:L]Coming Soon: Saw V: Koules admitted they were considering taking a break this year, but now there is no stopping the Saw machine. Unless Saw IV does Hostel II numbers at the box office, it’s a virtual guarantee that Saw V will be out Halloween 2008. If the script’s not right, we won’t do it,” said Koules. “We really won’t. Lionsgate’s been great about that. They won’t hold us to it. [But] Law & Order does 24 episodes a year. Law & Order does 48 minutes or 46 minutes a week. We don’t have to start shooting this until next May. It’s June and I already know how Saw IV ends and what I want to do in Saw V, so in a year I can get a script ready.”
