SAW III SLASHES IT’S WAY TO NUMBER ONE

(VIDEO) Saw III writer Leigh Wannell talks about the success behind Saw III’s number one Halloween weekend.

Saw III slashes its way to number one at the box office totaling $34.3 million over Halloween weekend. Saw III would be nothing without the written word on the page to start off with. Original Saw writer Leigh Whannell who penned all three stories with different partners never expected there would be two sequels let alone such a successful series. He talks about writing the first Saw with James Wan.

The device that really broke the Saw films out was the use of the horrific traps by Jigsaw to claim his victims. Leigh reveals the traps were simply an after thought that caught on because of the fans.

“James and I wrote the film thinking we were going to shoot it on video in Australia and it was going to be an expensive little demo reel that we were gonna show to other people to try and get another film off the ground. We kind of saw Saw as a means to an end rather than the thing that was gonna break us out.”

Two films later the fans are still showing their Saw love making number three the number one movie in America. Leigh says he’s amazed the first film took off in the first place.

“I had written the first draft and I thought, ‘we really need to see how vicious this guy is,’ this killer because you’ve got two guys stuck in the bathroom and there’s the threat of danger but you really need to see what the guy is capable of. I thought wouldn’t it be cool if you flashed back and showed some of this guy’s previous traps therefore when we come back to the bathroom we know they’re in trouble. Turns out the audience really took hold of those traps. They took that 40 seconds of screen time and said, ‘yes this is what we want,’ and really it was the fans who told us how much they liked the traps.”

Turns out SAW III is charitable as well. The official SAW III poster where a vial of star Tobin Bell’s own blood was mixed into the red ink used for Jigsaw’s scarlet cape was auctioned off on Lionsgate website winning a $1,110 bid to the American Red Cross. The remaining unsigned blood posters were sold at $20 each raising $12,350 for the Red Cross. The SAW franchise continues with writers hard at work on Saw IV for a Halloween 2007 release.

“We never planned there would be a film so the fact that there was a part two was amazing to us and part three it’s becoming a franchise which we think is great. We grew up watching all the horror film franchises from the eighties like Friday 13th and Freddy Krugers. So what we’re trying to do is create a horror film franchise that has some integrity to it so it doesn’t slowly go down the hill and decline.”