Chris Rock's SAW reboot SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW starring Samuel L. Jackson is all set to bring the pain to a theater near you this Summer. And today we're hearing that original SAW creator and THE INVISIBLE MAN writer-director Leigh Whannell is not involved with the film at all.
He says:
I was on a location scout for [The Invisible Man] and I got a phone call from one of the guys at Lionsgate who’s a friend of mine and when he told me about Chris Rock.
He adds:
I thought back to a couple of years ago. I was at a film festival party at the Palm Springs Film Festival and my agent, much to my horror, pushed me towards Chris Rock and was like, ‘Say hi to Chris!’ I think I said something lame like, ‘I’m a big fan,’ and he hears that a hundred times a day so he was like, ‘Ok!’ And as he was walking away, his agent said to him, ‘That guy wrote Saw,’ and he like stopped in his tracks, came back and was like, ‘You wrote Saw?’ And suddenly he was super interested and he said to me, ‘I would love to make a Saw film.’ And I thought it was just something that you say at a party, you know? Like, ‘Hey! I’d love to dye my hair pink, too!’ You just say it because the person’s got pink hair, you don’t wanna make them feel bad. Turns out, he was serious.
Described as "Saw on steroids," we don't know much about the plot specifics of this reboot other than Rock will play a police detective investigating a series of grizzly crimes with Samuel L. Jackson playing his father, Max Minghella as his partner, and Marisol Nichols as his boss, Capt. Angie Garza.
This re-imagining will be directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who helmed three of the most successful films in the franchise, and is being touted as
An amped up level of deviously treacherous traps, clever clues and the edge-of-the-seat suspense they expect from one of the world’s most terrifying horror franchises.
Bousman directs the new flick from a script based on a story by Chris Rock and written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg. It will be executive produced by Chris Rock, long-time executive producer Daniel Heffner and the original creators James Wan, and Leigh Whannell. It will be produced by longtime SAW producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules. Originally set to be unleashed in October, it will now bring the pain on May 15, 2020.