‘Do you wanna play a… new game?’ Chris Rock is masterminding the next grisly Saw movie, but don’t worry, it’ll still be painted with guts.
With 2010’s Saw 3D, cinemagoers thought they’d endured the final chapter of the torture-porn franchise. Then, in 2017, Jigsaw hit our screens: an epilogue of sorts designed to please the fans.
But nobody saw Chris Rock coming. As a longtime fan of the series, the comedian/actor is offering his new take on Saw’s twisted world this summer. There will be blood, but laughs too.
While attending a recent Television Critics Association press event, IGN’s David Griffin got the chance to ask Rock why he got interested in the franchise. The answer sparks intrigue for the upcoming horror.
Rock said:
A lot of times I go to a movie or I watch a TV show and I go: ‘Wow, you know, two jokes would have made a big difference in that.’ I love Saw, but I was like: ‘Wow, it has almost no humor at all.’
So, it seemed like a good place… good fertile ground… by the way, the new Saw, I’ve seen like a rough cut. It’s still Saw… it’s bloody, it’s gory, but there’s like a sprinkling of humor here and there. We’re not revamping it, it’s not Scary Movie, it’s Saw.
With the current working title The Organ Donor, Rock’s idea is ‘completely reverential to the legacy of the material while reinvigorating the brand with his wit, creative vision and passion for this classic horror franchise’, according to Lionsgate CEO Joe Drake.
Drake told Variety: ‘When Chris Rock came to us and described in chilling detail his fantastic vision that reimagines and spins off the world of the notorious Jigsaw Killer, we were all-in.’
While Rock has laid out the story for the new film, Darren Lynn Bousman (who helmed Saw II, III and IV) is directing. The screenplay has also been written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg, who previously penned Jigsaw.
Producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules said:
Chris wants to put his own spin on the Saw franchise in the way Eddie Murphy put a completely fresh perspective on buddy-cop films with 48 Hours. This new Saw is going to be an event film in the making for horror fans.
The Saw franchise has grossed nearly a billion dollars since leaping onto the horror scene in 2004, with the depraved story of John Kramer, aka Jigsaw, a demented serial killer who puts morally askew people to the test to earn their right to live.
Rock will reportedly star as a police officer on the trail of a potentially new killer, with Samuel L. Jackson appearing as his father.
The next Saw film will gush into cinemas on May 15, 2020.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.