Saw X Producers Confirm That Yes, They Read All Of Your Internet Comments And Complaints [Exclusive Interview]
The first "Saw" movie famously launched the careers of modern horror maestros James Wan and Leigh Whannell, but they quickly moved on to different pastures. In their place, the larger "Saw" franchise — the horror series that defined the aughts, dominated the Halloween box office for years, and inspired a bajillion pearl-clutching think pieces — was shepherded forward by producers Oren Koules and Mark Burg, who have masterminded every single film in the series. If you want to tap into the "Saw" braintrust, to really understand how these movies are made and what drives them, these are the guys you speak with.
"Saw X," the tenth film in the series, is both a throwback and a departure. On one hand, it's a prequel, set between the first and second films, and an excuse to bring Tobin Bell's John Kramer back from the dead. But on the other, it's a slickly produced, surprisingly character-driven evolution of the franchise. It may be set in the past, but this film truly does represent the potential future of what a "Saw" movie can be.
I sat down with Koules and Burg following a screening of "Saw X" at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, ahead of the film's theatrical opening. We talked about Bell returning to the role that has transformed him from working character actor to horror icon, their favorite traps in the series, and what the film's ending means for future installments in the "Saw" series (and there will be a spoiler warning when we get to that point). And yes, Koules and Burg admit that they read fan reactions — and sometimes take them into account when planning future films.
'...we'd be looking for revenge too, just probably not as well executed as Jigsaw does'
There's two types of "Saw" fans, I think. There's the more casual viewer who enjoys the thrills of the traps and the gore. But there's people like me, who are deeply invested in the increasingly complicated series timeline and the character relationships. How do you make a movie that appeals to both of those crowds?
Oren Koules: It is interesting about the timeline because when we first started working on a script, we thought it was going to be between ["Saw II" and "Saw III."]. Kevin Geutert, who was the keeper of all considering he has edited or directed every single "Saw" film, really wanted [Shawnee Smith's Amanda] character to be much earlier before she got kind of disillusioned. In the timeline, it's three weeks after "Saw 1" ended. Jigsaw closed the door [at the end of the first "Saw"], and it's three weeks later, so we still have kind of a fresh Shawnee. We wanted to make that for real "Saw" fans that have watched all nine and now 10. We also wanted to try to make it accessible to people, since it's 20 years since the first one, that have never seen a "Saw" film. We kind of try to make it a little more linear.
Tobin Bell's the true, proper lead for the first time here. It's taken 19 years, but finally he's getting to be Freddy Krueger, getting to be Jason Voorhees, he gets to be front and center at all times. Can you talk about how it took this long and how going back in time was the only way?
Mark Burg: Tobin died in "Saw III." So the only way we could really keep him in the franchise going forward was in flashbacks. Hard to do a flashback in [the] current time of where we were in the movie. It'd been long enough that Oren and myself decided it was time to go back, and in all honesty, we were working on this movie, this script, five years ago, 2018. Then Chris Rock met somebody from Lionsgate at a wedding, ironically, in Brazil and he told the chairman of Lionsgate that he loved the "Saw" movies. Michael Burns, vice chairman of Lionsgate, came back to L.A. after the wedding and started calling me up and said, "You need to reach out to Chris Rock. All right, Chris wants to do a 'Saw' movie."
Oren and myself did. It took a couple of months to actually get in a room with him and he was like, "Yeah, I want to do a 'Saw' movie and here's my idea." That ultimately became "Spiral." So we decided to do that movie because Chris was available, wanted to do it, and we kind of put "Saw 10" on the back burner. This was supposed to be "Saw 9," then we did "Spiral," and then we came back to this movie. Tobin is such a brilliant actor that it was long, long overdue to make him the lead in the movie. What's great, we think, about this movie is that you really learn a lot more about John Kramer. We haven't ever timed it out, but we think it's probably about 25 minutes that he's John Kramer before he kind of gets angry and Jigsaw comes out, for lack of a better word.
In my head I imagine John Kramer and his apprentices making Home Depot runs, heading to Radio Shack, buying all the tape recorders. Even though we never see that, we do see a shot of him in a peaceful moment enjoying the nature, enjoying outdoors, and sketching a trap in his notebook. It's a really, really beautiful but also a grim, very funny moment. I love the humanization of him and this movie is the first one in a while to really test how much does he actually believe in what he says he believes in. This movie's about that, right?
Mark Burg: A hundred percent. He's never gone after somebody that didn't deserve it. That's kind of his moral code, and it's probably as strong in this movie and visible in this movie than any other movie because you see him being wronged, which we never really had in the past. We've never really seen victims wronging people for the amount of time that we spend on this movie. I think that's what gives this movie so much heart.
Oren Koules: What they pulled on him was despicable. No matter if it was you, myself, or Mark, if they did that to us we'd be looking for revenge too, just probably not as well executed as Jigsaw does.
'I don't know how we got away with that, it's kind of sacrilegious'
Can you talk about getting Kevin Greutert back to direct this one? "Saw VI" is probably my favorite of the series, and that film and "Saw X" both feel of a piece. They're both about medical malpractice.
Oren Koules: "Saw VI" is really the inspiration for this movie. There's a scene in "Saw VI" where he's talking to the insurance guy and he won't cover his... If you remember, there's a scene where he talks about getting the insurance company to cover experimental treatment.
Right.
Oren Koules: That's really the basis for this movie, is the experimental treatment.
Was that direct connection the key to getting Kevin back in the director seat?
Oren Koules: It was our only choice.
Mark Burg: We went after him hard because we wanted him for this moment. There were people at Lionsgate that were going, "Oh, you should meet this director, that director, so-and-so's done this amazing..." And we're like, "No, we want Kevin."
Oren Koules: We have to really thread a needle for people that are fans, they know. You can't fool them, you can't just plunk them in and go, "Hey, it's in the timeline three weeks after "Saw 1." You need to make sure that every I is dotted, every T is crossed, everything so nobody can go back and say, "Well that doesn't work in your timeline, that doesn't work." You needed someone like Kevin, who's either edited or directed every single movie, to be the guardian of the timeline and perfection. Yes, we were asked to meet other directors, we didn't do it, truthfully.
As a longtime fan, I know what I personally enjoy the most about certain "Saw" traps, how I rank them, et cetera. I'd like to know your personal favorites. With all 10 movies on the table, what would you pick?
Mark Burg: I think my favorite right now is probably the blood boarding trap in "Saw X". I also love the trap where we scalped a woman [in "Saw IV"], kind of pulled her hair back, which I thought was kind of brutal. We called the one trap "Twisty Tim," where we took the man's arms and just kind of twisted them on the cross, which looking back on it, I don't know how we got away with that, it's kind of sacrilegious. I know Oren has a favorite.
Oren Koules: You remember the first "Saw" trap where Amanda takes the key out and she cuts out the guy's stomach first to get the key in it? I'm the guy on the floor.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Oren Koules: She cuts my stomach out. It was kind of surreal that they put a leather, almost a saddle thing, and she kept hitting this leather. Instead of paying actor a thousand dollars for the day, I laid there for free and–
Mark Burg: We were broke. We made that movie for $965,000.
Oren Koules: We were budget-challenged.
Mark Burg: We were budget-challenged. I remember going to Oren, I'm like, "Who do we get to do this?" And he's like, "We went to a couple of people, it was like a thousand." And Oren's like, "Hey, save the money. I'll do it." I was like, "Great, lay down."
'It made sense for this story to open it up'
I do love how the first seven movies really lean into that low-budget aesthetic. The grimy, soundstage look of those early movies became something unique, its own visual look. The new films, "Jigsaw," "Spiral," and now "X," I don't want to say abandoned, but that old look has certainly been retired. These new films are bigger, and they actually have a lot of outdoor scenes. Seeing John Kramer outdoors is like, "Oh my God, has he been outside in his life?" It's been 20 years, Jigsaw is now an elder statesman of horror and the newer movies have gloss to them. They have that studio respectability to them. Can you talk about embracing that?
Oren Koules: We still make it for nothing.
Mark Burg: But we wanted this movie ... It's the first time we've ever said where a movie was being filmed. We call this city Mexico City, we see it's Mexico City. John Kramer lands at the airport, we show signs. So we had to bring him outside just to feel the flavor of Mexico City. It made sense for this story to open it up.
Oren Koules: We embraced the city, the culture. There's a little mysticism and the vibe around in Mexico City. We wanted to try to show him in part of the city.
The rest of this interview contains spoilers for "Saw X."
This movie could easily be the final Tobin Bell John Kramer story. We've seen him personally tested, we've seen him and Amanda have an adventure together. But also, I had a lot of fun watching John and Amanda have a one-off story together. Do you see there being more John Kramer stories or is this the end of John Kramer?
Mark Burg: Being that we're superstitious, we kind of don't really talk about a sequel until this movie opens, but if this movie should open, do you think John Kramer/Jigsaw would want somebody out there knowing who he was? There's only one person that's not in his world, and that's a brilliant actress by the name of Synnove Lund who played Cecilia in this movie. We kind of kept her alive in this movie.
Oren Koules: Just in case.
In the credits scene, we catch up with Detective Hoffman. One of my favorite things in the flashbacks in the original run of movies was seeing the incredibly messed-up dynamic, the weird family that John Kramer's built. Everybody doesn't quite get along, everybody is backbiting. Is there a future where we see that movie, where John, Amanda, Hoffman, and maybe even Jill are all working together?
Oren Koules: Sometimes we get comments from people that John Kramer's too all-knowing, he knows everything. What we wanted to do is, showing how early this movie was, that he already had a relationship with Hoffman because we've never talked about that. And you realize then how he knows so much, that he has a detective. In "Saw X," he says, "Hello, detective" [in an early scene] and then we see him at the end, and we really wanted to show fans how long him and Hoffman have been together. We're just trying to kind of piece more things together.
Mark Burg: Costas is great to work with, Costas Mandylor, the actor who plays Hoffman. We'd love to bring him and, without giving any names, a bunch of the previous actors that were alive during this time period of "Saw 1" and "Saw II" and bring them all back for one final "Saw."
You talk about Jigsaw being all-knowing, but something I like about "Saw X" is that there's a key moment where we realize that things have gone off the rails and a new variable has entered the equation. Suddenly, John has to use his limited Spanish to stay alive.
Oren Koules: He's doing what any of us would do. He's dying of cancer, he sees a doctor that says it's months and he's trying to extend his life. I think his guard is down, because he's so focused on just trying to stay alive, which any of us would do. Yes, he did walk into a trap. We tried to make him real, we tried to make him human. That's what we tried to do the first 20, 25 minutes of John Kramer in this movie, that he's a real person, that he's an engineer, that he's sick and he's dying, and it's kind of the credo that he lives.
'Tobin Bell can do anything and he can make you believe anything'
One thing I've always appreciated about Jigsaw is that, before we meet him, we get the impression that he's just a maniac. But he's always portrayed as being a guy who is extremely levelheaded. He's more like your slightly eccentric uncle than like a maniacal serial killer.
Oren Koules: Tobin Bell can do anything and he can make you believe anything. He's that good of an actor.
There are still a few lingering threads from both "Jigsaw" and "Spiral." Will we see surviving characters from "Jigsaw" and "Spiral"? Do they have a future in the franchise?
Mark Burg: "Spiral" was a kind of one-off movie. Could there be a way of John Kramer interacting with–
Oren Koules: Max.
Mark Burg: Max Minghella or Chris Rock? We kind of didn't do it in the first "Spiral." Is that a possibility? Chris is busy, it depends if Chris would want to come back and do more "Spiral" movies.
Oren Koules: Or "Jigsaw." There's a bunch of great characters in "Jigsaw." We really don't ... We're not just giving you a line. We really don't think about it–
Mark Burg: Until the movie opens.
Oren Koules: Until we see how it does, because also we don't test screen the movie. So we don't know what audiences like. For the next month, we'll read a lot of Reddit, read all the different sites, read fan sites, and see what characters they identify with, what characters they like. In a weird way, the release of the movie is our test screen. Most studios will test screen and film three, four times and have-
Mark Burg: Prior to a release.
Oren Koules: Yeah.
Mark Burg: We don't do that because we don't want people knowing the ending and knowing where we're going with the franchise. Shawnee came back to this movie because Oren and myself read so much about the audiences wanting more of her, and quite frankly, wanting more John Kramer. Because of [fans] wanting that, that's where this story came from. We'll sit down and read next week, the week after, and then we'll start meeting with the writers and hopefully [Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger] will want to come back and Kevin will want to come back, and then we'll take it from there. We really don't [think about it] until the movie opens. Right now, we're focused on this movie and we haven't really sat down and thought about the next one yet.
"Saw X" is in theaters now.