James Wan burst onto the scene with Saw in 2004. Made on a production budget of $1.2 million the film grossed over $103 million worldwide. He followed that up with a couple of duds in 2007 — the not-so-scary puppet thriller Dead Silence and the Kevin Bacon-led revenge feature Death Sentence — only to return to horror in 2011 with Insidious, which was budgeted at $1.5 million and went on to make over $97 million worldwide.
Now, The Conjuring is in theaters and on a budget of only $20 million, the “based on a true story” thriller has made over $95 million in just ten days and in less than two months he’ll be back in theaters again with Insidious: Chapter 2, a sequel to the 2011 film, which will surely carry a larger budget than the original, but I doubt it will be any larger than the $20 million spent on The Conjuring, which itself is already expected to get a sequel.
Wan is putting his talents for low budget horror aside at the moment to direct Fast & Furious 7, but I don’t think anyone is expecting him to keep those knives in the cupboard for long.
I’m sure more serious horror fans than I may look at my question in the headline and have several alternate directors to list that may not be as commercial as Wan, but given his recent track record and should Insidious 2 excite audiences as much as the first film and as much as The Conjuring it would be hard to deny Wan’s success.
Insidious 2 reteams Wan with his Saw co-creator and regular creative partner Leigh Whannell and reunites the cast of the original — Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye and Ty Simpkins — and will follow the haunted Lambert family as they seek to uncover the mysterious childhood secret that has left them dangerously connected to the spirit world.
Insidious: Chapter 2 hits theaters on September 13, check out the latest international trailer directly below.
