The SAW franchise expansion SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW was supposed to be reaching theatres on May 15th, but the film was pulled from the Lionsgate release schedule back in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Lionsgate has announced the film's new release date, and I'm sure SAW fans are going to be disappointed to hear that we're going to have to wait an entire year to see it.
While the SAW films used to be released in October, with the marketing line being If it's Halloween it must be SAW, they're determined to make this one a May release for some reason. SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW is now set to reach theatres on May 21, 2021.
The film stars Chris Rock, who also crafted the story idea and pitched it to Lionsgate. Rock's story idea was fleshed out into a screenplay by JIGSAW writers Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg, and SAW II, III, and IV director Darren Lynn Bousman returned to take the helm of this film.
A sadistic mastermind unleashes a twisted form of justice in SPIRAL, the terrifying new chapter from the book of SAW. Working in the shadow of an esteemed police veteran (Samuel L. Jackson), brash Detective Ezekiel "Zeke" Banks (Chris Rock) and his rookie partner William Schenk (Max Minghella) take charge of a grisly investigation into murders that are eerily reminiscent of the city’s gruesome past. Unwittingly entrapped in a deepening mystery, Zeke finds himself at the center of the killer’s morbid game.
Rock, Minghella, and Jackson are joined in the cast by Nazneen Contractor as a coroner who works closely with Zeke, and Marisol Nichols as his boss, Captain Angie Garza.
Mark Burg and Oren Koules produced SPIRAL, with Rock earning an executive producer credit alongside Leigh Whannell, James Wan, and Daniel Heffner. Whannell has said that he had no involvement with the film at all; he and Wan are given executive producer credits because they created the franchise.
SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW was rated R for "sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, pervasive language, some sexual references, and brief drug use."