Fans, fresh stories will keep series alive
Recalling the heyday of slasher cinema when studios Paramount and New Line were churning out Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street sequels year after year, Twisted Pictures will not clean and sheathe their production blade once Saw IV (opening Oct. 26th) massacres audiences this month. Without interruption, producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules are moving on to Saw V for 2008. And, as we told you here, production designer-turned-director, David Hackl, is working closely with Saw IV scribes Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton on fleshing out the next chapter.
Darren Bousman (pictured) is also, “talking to David about the story,” says the director of installments two through four. “We’ve been throwing it around. At this point, it looks like I’ll be shooting [the Scanners remake] at the same time here in Toronto. I’m sure I’ll oversee the Saw V script as James [Wan] and Leigh [Whannell] have done with parts two and three.”
Welcomed into the “Saw” franchise with 2005’s chapter, Canadian native Hackl tells Shock, “We have about a week to write the outline, then the script by the end of the month. We’re really just throwing down the ideas now and it’s coming together quickly,” he says with a modicum of exuberance. “I’ve been with Darren on all of [the sequels], we’ve always arrived just before Christmas with a script that needed a lot of shakedown but, before shooting, [the script] is really tight. Right until the last days of filming we’re always changing things and adjusting things just seeing what works as the story unfolds and I think that’s why people like them – because we never let them rest. We don’t go into pre-production with a white script and say, ‘That’s it no changes.’ We push it so there’s no holes.”
Presently working on Bousman’s horror-musical Repo! The Genetic Opera, Hackl hopes, “a lot of the crew come over [to Saw V] because I’m looking forward to the support of the people I’ve had as my art department team. Tony Ianni, my art director, is now going to production design for me.”
So just how long does Twisted – who revealed to us that they are producing Bousman’s aforementioned Scanners – intend to keep the “Saw” series afloat on its lucrative cinematic sea of blood? Koules says it depends on two factors: “Stories and fans – if we can keep great stories and if the fans keep coming. It’s that combo. It’s really about the stories and right now it’s too precious for us. We’ll never start a sequel unless we feel good. We’ll actually spend money in prep and shut it down if it’s not good. If the story and the individual character stories right, then we’ll go. If not, we’ll skip a year. That’s just been our motto.”
Source: Ryan Rotten
