"Saw" horror franchise faces test with 5th movie

By Jay A. Fernandez

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Everybody loves a spooky mystery. Here's a good one: How the hell has "Saw," a horror flick made for $1.2 million and nearly dumped straight to video, spawned a franchise that has scared up more than $1 billion?

Given the films' enduring appeal amid a flood of horror product, it's a question whose answer provides insight into how to manage a low-budget franchise. And with "Saw V" opening on Friday, Lionsgate's strategy of releasing a new film each Halloween faces a crucial test. Last October's installment dipped from "Saw III's" $163 million in worldwide box office to $137 million, raising the question of how long the property can keep up its hugely profitable pace.

The "Saw" story is as simple as its premise. Australian duo James Wan and Leigh Whannell wrote a script about a pair of confined strangers manipulated by Jigsaw, a diabolical mastermind who forces them to make ghastly choices. They filmed a seven-minute short featuring Whannell with his head in a macabre bear trap, which the late producer Gregg Hoffman found and brought to partners Mark Burg and Oren Koules of Twisted Pictures in early 2003. They decided to turn it into a feature on the cheap.

The producers showed the short to Lionsgate, which picked up the rights and planned to release it direct to video. Burg and Koules retained ownership of the property, and co-writer/director Wan wisely sacrificed his upfront fee for a cut of the gross.

MIDNIGHT MADNESS

"It was perfect timing because Lionsgate as a company was just starting to grow," Koules says. "And it was a perfect film that the marketing department could get behind."

The film packed three midnight screenings at Sundance in 2004, and tests in suburban Los Angeles and Las Vegas scored so highly that Lionsgate decided to release the film in theaters, on October 29 as a Halloween treat. It opened at a startling $18.3 million and grossed more than $100 million worldwide.

"Saw II," helmed by music video and commercials director Darren Lynn Bousman, was greenlighted the weekend the first film opened. Then came the kicker: Fans bought more than $70 million worth of videos and DVDs of the first installment.

The "Saw" team shrewdly stood its blood-soaked ground on the weekend before Halloween for three consecutive years. While Lionsgate is far from the first studio to target that holiday with a horror release, its marketing team made this explicit by utilizing the tagline: "If it's Halloween, it must be 'Saw.'"

And it slaughtered the marketplace, tallying $153 million, $162 million and $137 million worldwide for the second, third and fourth installments.

"What they have done with 'Saw' is a very unusual approach," says Roy Lee, producer of recent horror films "The Strangers" and "Quarantine." "Making the release of a new installment of 'Saw' an annual event is something no other studio has been able to accomplish. It seems similar to the model of a television series. Look at '24.' Does anyone argue that they are beating the concept to death?"

FRANCHISES FRIED

Such old-school slasher properties as "Friday the 13th," "Halloween," and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" generated enduring horror villains Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger. "Nightmare" even put New Line on the map in 1984 much the way "Saw" has boosted Lionsgate.

But the stewards of those popular franchises essentially took the money and ran, milking six, seven or 10 sequels without developing the story line or the main characters. As a result, the properties quickly thinned their returns and devolved into camp, with Freddy becoming a Borscht Belt one-liner machine. Such second-tier brands as "Child's Play," which was campy from the get-go, and "The Stepfather," which was airing on TV by its third installment, were never really that popular. Such recent successes as "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" were self-referential, ironic and relatively expensive to make. "The Ring" and "The Grudge," both derived from Asian horror source material, have stalled after two films, as has the torture-porn movement typified by "Hostel."

"Saw," in contrast, is deadly serious. Its moralistic ethos of righteous living, designed and perpetrated by a methodical, intellectual madman, evolves while remaining consistent in the ways that count. The intricacy of Jigsaw's vision -- executed even beyond his death -- lends itself to repeat viewings.