Who could have guessed we’d wind up with aChris RockSawmovie? In fact, even though the trailer forSpiralhas already dropped, I still can’t get over it! And it turns out thatSawco-creatorLeigh Whannellwas just as shocked by Rock’s enthusiasm for the franchise.
Whannell co-wrote the very firstSawmovie withJames Wan. He also worked on the scripts forSaw IIandSaw III, but then that was it for Whannell in the franchise. It appears as though he’ll always be an executive producer on new films having helped create the series, but as he said himself, he hasn’t had anything to do with theSawfilms for quite a while, and that includesSpiral.
While chatting with Whannell about his upcoming movieInvisible Man, he told me about first hearing that Rock was going to make a newSawinstallment and it turns out, Whannell did once have a conversation with Rock that suggested this might eventually happen:
“I was on a location scout for this movie and I got a phone call from one of the guys at Lionsgate who’s a friend of mine and when he told me about Chris Rock, I thought back to a couple of years ago. I was at a film festival party at the Palm Springs Film Festival and my agent, much to my horror, pushed me towards Chris Rock and was like, ‘Say hi to Chris!’ I think I said something lame like, ‘I’m a big fan,’ and he hears that a hundred times a day so he was like, ‘Ok!’ And as he was walking away, his agent said to him, ‘That guy wroteSaw,’ and he like stopped in his tracks, came back and was like, ‘You wroteSaw?’ And suddenly he was super interested and he said to me, ‘I would love to make aSawfilm.’ And I thought it was just something that you say at a party, you know? Like, ‘Hey! I’d love to dye my hair pink, too!’ You just say it because the person’s got pink hair, you don’t wanna make them feel bad. Turns out, he was serious. That was not an off hand thing that he said. He really did wanna make aSawfilm.”
AfterJigsawI could have done without the return of the franchise so soon, but Rock’s enthusiasm for the concept is keeping hopes high for this new installment. I can’t say the firstSpiraltrailer that dropped the other week got me as hyped for the film’s May 15th release as I would have liked, but it played strong enough and Rock,Samuel L. JacksonandMax Minghella’s involvement certainly suggests the movie has some serious promise.
If you haven’t seen theSpiraltrailer just yet,click hereto give it a watch and be sure to keep an eye out for Whannell’s new film,The Invisible Man, which hits theaters nationwide on February 28th.
