Saw: Blumhouse reportedly acquires franchise rights from Twisted Pictures

According to Deadline, Blumhouse Productions is “acquiring the perspective rights to Twisted Pictures’ portion of the Saw franchise.” In other words, Blumhouse is taking over the rights previously held by Twisted Pictures founders Mark Burg and Oren Koules. Lionsgate, which still owns 50% of the franchise, will remain involved as a partner.

At the moment, no new Saw movie is in development, but when the smoke clears on this deal, we should hear something about how the franchise will move forward.

Interestingly, this move would bring the Saw franchise closer to James Wan. The Saw co-creator’s production company, Atomic Monster, officially merged with Blumhouse Productions last year. Of course, this doesn’t mean that he’ll have any involvement in the franchise again.

There had been reports of disagreements (to put it mildly) between Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate, and unfortunately, that led to the previously announced Saw XI being cancelled entirely. Given Saw X‘s critical and commercial success, it was a no-brainer that there would be a sequel. Kevin Greutert was slated to return to direct from a script by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. Then suddenly, everything stopped.

Melton later added that they hadn’t heard anything about the project since May 2024. “It’s stalled at a managerial level. It has nothing to do with the creative or anything else. There’s higher-level things at play,” he said. “Saw XI may or may not be made, but we have a very timely story in it, and I hope it gets made just because of that. It taps into the same themes of Saw VI, where you’re a citizen, you feel angry and frustrated with something, you feel like you can’t do anything, and John Kramer’s going to do it. The reason it’s held up is just, there’s inter-squabbling between producers and Lionsgate. They just can’t quite get on the same page.“

Hopefully, this new deal with Blumhouse will get the Saw franchise back on track, but I will miss the Twisted Pictures production logo at the beginning. It always helped set the tone for whatever gruesome mayhem was in store for us.

The post Saw: Blumhouse reportedly acquires franchise rights from Twisted Pictures appeared first on JoBlo.