20 Years of ‘Saw’: From the Humble Beginnings to the Game-Changing Twists (Exclusive)

Happy belated birthday to Saw!

It's been almost exactly 20 years since production began on the original twisty, gory film that birthed a franchise. Beginning as a short from young Australian filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell, producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules were intrigued enough to give the duo $1 million to turn their project into a full-length feature.

Written by Whannell and directed by Wan, 2004's Saw opens with a photographer named Adam (Whannell) waking up in a bathtub, chained to a pipe in a very disgusting and creepy bathroom. Across from him is a dead body, face-down, and an alive body in the form of Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes), who is also chained. The duo soon discovers that they're playing a game orchestrated by the mysterious serial killer Jigsaw. In the end, Dr. Gordon manages to saw off his own leg and hobble out of the bathroom. Still chained, Adam — and the audience — is shocked when the dead body suddenly rises up, revealing himself to be John Kramer (Tobin Bell), a.k.a. Jigsaw. The killer had been playing dead throughout the entire ordeal, setting up one of the most iconic twists in horror history.

The rest is history. Saw earned over $100 million at the box office, launching a franchise and catapulting its filmmakers to horror film stardom (Whannell wrote Saw II and Saw III and directed The Invisible Man; Wan directed Insidious and The Conjuring, as well as Aquaman and Furious 7). And now Saw is going back to its roots. The recently released Saw X is set between the events of Saw and Saw II and revives Kramer, who was killed off in Saw III.

We chatted with Saw producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules to learn more about their decision to bring Bell back into the fold, returning to that infamous bathroom and what the future holds for the franchise. (During the conversation, Burg and Koules were seated next to Jigsaw mascot Billy the Puppet, whose recent parody of Nicole Kidman's AMC ad was an internet sensation until AMC ordered it to be taken down.)

I saw the movie yesterday at the Burbank AMC, which felt fitting after your buddy Billy had his killer viral trip to AMC. Self-amputation did indeed feel good in a place like that.

Mark Burg: We're thankful AMC is still showing our movie!

If we went back to the set of that first film, which was made for like a million bucks, and I told you that, 20 years later, you'd be releasing a 10th installment, how insane would I have sounded?

Burg: We started filming Saw on September 22, 2003, so it's been 20 years and six days since we started filming the Saw saga. And no, we thought we were making one movie and done. We just wanted to do something our own way and never thought we'd be making Saw II, let alone Saw X.

There are so many horror films and franchises, so what do you think has been the key to Saw enduring and staying so relevant?

Burg: I think it started with telling a good story. We got lucky with finding and casting Tobin Bell, who is the heart and soul of Saw. Without him, without Shawnee Smith, this franchise probably would not have worked. And then Leigh Whannell and James Wan creating Saw 1, and Leigh sticking with us for Saw II and Saw III, and setting the bar with Darren Bousman directing, it just keeps working. We don't really think about the next movie until the previous one opens. We're hoping that the audience finds Saw X. We set out to make a standalone movie, where, if you haven't seen any of the previous Saw movies, you can watch this movie and enjoy it and get it, like, "Oh, this is what Saw is about." And maybe people will find the previous movies. And should this movie work, we left some nuggets and threads in there that need to be finished to keep the saga going.

What's your memory of Saw first coming on your radar, and what about the idea spoke to you? James and Leigh are now horror masters but they were young unknowns back then.

Oren Koules: We saw the seven-minute short first — on VHS by the way. We all absolutely loved the short, and there was a script accompanying it, and I remember going home that night with the script and just saying, "Please be good!" Because the short was so amazing and they were two guys that we really liked and wanted to be in business with.

Burg: We saw the short, and then the following day James and Leigh were arriving from Australia. They were two kids; I don't think either one of them had started shaving yet. And they came into our office, and we're like, "Okay, you want to direct, and you want to star. So, we've got $1 million, and if you guys can do it for that, your movie is green-lit." They had arrived in L.A. like two hours prior, and I think they were kind of in shock.

Koules: They didn't say "yes."

Burg: Well, they didn't know what to do. And then, of course, their agents being agents tried to say, "Oh, no, you don't want to be in business with them. We can sell your script for a lot more," so they could get a bigger commission. And quickly what happened was that the agents were just trying to sell the script for a ton of money, and James and Leigh were like, "No, we kind of like these guys, and they're willing to make the movie right now." They came back the next day, we had another meeting, and they said yes. Six weeks later, we were actually filming the movie on a sound stage called Lacy Street Studios. It's a place where videos — and probably porn — are produced in Downtown L.A.

Koules: Actually, I think it was the latter. A lot of people told us that later. [Laughs] It was a cool little studio. The only rules were, whatever flats or any sides you had, you left. So we'd literally go around and look, and we're like, "Oh, in the other room, there's some police station flats," and so that's where Cary Elwes and Shawnee Smith are when they're being interviewed.

Burg: I wonder if our bathroom is still in there.

You mentioned getting lucky with Tobin, and obviously, the reveal of him at the end of the original film is such an iconic twist, but there’s only that one real scene for him to go big as an actor. So what made him the person that you initially wanted to cast, and then when did you realize that his performance as this character could carry a franchise?

Burg: We'd seen him in previous stuff. We had no money, right? We made the movie for $965,000, so getting Brad Pitt or Anthony Hopkins to play the role was not going to happen. We made the offer to Tobin hoping he would say yes, and I think it was eight days of work and seven of them lying on the ground. We didn't really have the money to make a prosthetic of the body but we thought we'd buy some used prosthetics and put it in a way where nobody would see his face or head. And Tobin insisted on being the guy the whole eight days. And he was 60 years old; he's a little bit older now. I think he was basically a glorified extra for seven days, and, on the eighth day, he spoke. When he gets up off the ground, it was mesmerizing. I remember being there watching and going, "Oh my God, nobody's going to see this coming."

While Tobin appears in almost every film, you initially killed off John in Saw III. Afterward, did you ever regret that decision?

Burg: We said that every day: "Who are the idiots that said 'yes' to killing the leader of your movie in Saw III?" We were like, "Alright, we did three," and who knew that this franchise was going to live on? Well, we had to come up with ways of bringing him back into the movie.

Koules: That's how we ended up here though. We really wanted to tell his story. And the first 20, 25 minutes of this movie, he's John Kramer. So I don't want to say it's payback, but it was a little bit of Tobin doing so much great stuff for us, and so this let him show off his chops and be John Kramer.

The last installment was Spiral with Chris Rock, and you guys really took a chance by mixing it up and trying something new, including not featuring Tobin at all. In the wake of that swing, were you eager to go back to the literal basics?

Burg: We love Chris and we loved Spiral. We developed this script prior to Spiral, and then Chris came out of left field saying, "Hey, I love Saw, I'd love to do a movie." Originally he wanted to star in, write, and direct, but then he got divorced and had to go do the Netflix divorce tour. [Laughs] As he says, by the way! And he didn't have the time to direct, so he co-wrote it, came up with the storyline, and starred in it. And we're proud of the movie. If Chris is around, hopefully, one day we can go back and merge that storyline with Jigsaw and Tobin."

In addition to Tobin returning as John, Shawnee Smith is also back as Amanda, and that reveal got a big cheer at my screening.

Koules: Cheering at the press screening? That's awesome.

Yeah, people were hyped to see her. So, knowing you were telling John's story between the first two films, was it automatic that Amanda had to factor in?

Burg: We knew she had to come back. Storywise, Jigsaw is dying, so we knew he couldn't physically do all the traps, and then we needed to create a storyline where somebody could help him.

Koules: I mean, he physically couldn't do half the things she did in the movie. People love her though. We don't test our movies, so we read chat rooms, Reddit, all different kinds of things, and she's so beloved that it was kind of obvious.

Burg: And we also wanted to show how John knows everything that's happening. So we put back in a thread of him talking to Det. Hoffman early on, which says that maybe he had his person on the inside listening or knowing what was going on to keep him safe. And then we bring Hoffman back in a little mid-credits scene. We haven't seen Costas in a couple years, so that was a lot of fun.

I kept waiting for Michael Beach's character from the start of the film to return and get his comeuppance for setting John up, and then, boom, there's Det. Hoffman helping John take care of him. Was that a last-minute addition, or was Costas' return always part of the plan?

Koules: It was something we talked about, and it is kind of what you said: we've got to pay back Beach. And Costas, we really wanted to give the fans a little bit of a nugget, knowing how early on Det. Hoffman was in John Kramer's life. So it all tied in perfectly together.

Burg: We decided to bring it all back to the Saw bathroom, which we recreated in Mexico City. By the way, it's the only set we left standing there, so we have the bathroom set in a warehouse in Mexico. So, should there be another Saw movie, plan on seeing it.

Between all of the twists and timeline movement, how are you able to keep things straight? I like to imagine there's some whiteboard in your office with a million strings connecting the dots.

Koules: Two words: Kevin Greutert. Kevin keeps it all straight; he's edited or directed every single film.

I couldn't believe that he edited this one in addition to directing it. Tip of the cap to him.

Koules: He edited the first five, so who has a better handle on the feel of early Saws than that guy?

Burg: He created the whole style of Saw. Kevin shot the heck out of this movie and hopefully, he finally gets his due as a big-time director, to the point where he can go do whatever movie he wants to next — after he does Saw 11! Because this movie has gotten such a buzz about it pre-opening, a bunch of actors that have been in previous Saw movies have reached out saying, "Hey, I was alive back then in the Saw franchise — I'd love to come back.'"

Wow, Saw: All-Stars, coming soon!

Burg: You don't mind if we use that, do you?

Koules: That might be the working title of the script: Saw: All Stars!

Until we see what you come up with for Saw: All-Stars, I was curious if anything has ever been deemed too gory or wild for a Saw film? Because there were a couple sequences in X that had me fully covering my eyes.

Koules: This is the big day for our production designers, because, instead of designing a kitchen, they actually get to build a trap from scratch. On this movie, we actually had a trap team that just built the traps. So they obviously want to go as far as they can and push the envelope. Unfortunately, we have to go deal with the MPAA. I don't think there's ever been a trap that we axed. We had to pull some traps back.

Burg: Yeah, we shoot more and we bring it back a little bit. This one, the leg trap was pushing the envelope as far as we could push the MPAA on that. That was the one trap that they kept coming back to and going, "No, no, no." And Oren was like, "Yes, yes, yes."

Koules: [Laughs] No, they were great. They had four or five notes. We cleaned up their notes, and then we probably spent two weeks trying to appease them with the leg trap. The good news is that it's Saw X, and, at this point, even the MPAA admits, "You know what, there's nobody walking into a Saw film that doesn't know it's a Saw film."

Saw X is now in theaters.