Spiral (2021) (Saw Spinoff)After the release of Jigsaw in 2017, Chris Rock expressed interest in expanding his portfolio to include other horror films, which sparked rumors about a potential new Saw chapter. The Spierig Brothers, who directed the film Jigsaw, expressed interest in directing another movie but ultimately chose against doing so. In May 2019, the project was given its formal announcement, and at the time, Rock was working on refining a screenplay written by Stolberg and Goldfinger. The other members of the cast didn't sign on until July, and shooting continued in Toronto for the remainder of the month and into August.
Spiral (2021), originally set for May 2020, was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and released on May 14, 2021 by Lionsgate. The film garnered mixed reviews from reviewers, who applauded the franchise's new approach but weren't sure whether it properly reinvented it.
Spiral has a storyline.
Off-duty Detective Marv Bozwick pursues a burglar through a sewage drainage pipe during a Fourth of July parade. Bozwick wakes in an active subway tunnel, hanging by his tongue, after being attacked from behind by a person wearing a pig mask. He is offered an option through recorded message: cut out his tongue and survive, or stay until the next train comes, killing him. Bozwick gets murdered by the train after failing to escape the trap in time. The following day, Detective Zeke Banks is assigned a new partner, idealistic rookie William Schenk, by police Captain Angie Garza. Banks and Schenk examine Bozwick's death, and Banks notices similarities to the Jigsaw Killer's method of operation.
Banks is caught while following a lead. When he wakes up, he is handcuffed to a pipe and a hacksaw is nearby. He thinks about cutting off his arm with a saw, but he gets away by using a loose bobby pin. He then finds Peter Dunleavy chained in place. Dunleavy was his former partner, but Banks fired him and put him in jail after Banks found out that he had killed someone. In front of him is a big machine that crushes glass and has been changed to quickly throw shrapnel at him. A tape recorder tells Banks that he can either let him go free or let him die. Banks tries to get the key to save Dunleavy, but he can't get it in time. Banks then goes to another room and finds Schenk, who turns out to have faked his own death by using the skinned body of the thief who lured Bozwick into the tunnels. Schenk was the copycat all along. He says that his real last name is Emmerson and that he is the son of Charlie Emmerson, whom Dunleavy killed because Charlie had agreed to testify against a dirty cop. He also says that Marcus, when he was chief, protected corrupt officers on purpose so that Article 8 could be used more effectively to clean the streets of crime.
Who led Spiral: From the Book of Saw?
Chris Rock played Zeke Banks. Detective William Schenk / Emmerson was played by Max Minghella in the film.
Leonidas Castrounis represented William the Younger.
Marcus Banks was played by Samuel L. Jackson. Capt. Angie Garza was played by Marisol Nichols.
Daniel Petronijevic was Marv Bozwick. Richard Zeppieri was the actor who played Detective Fitch.
Peter Dunleavy was played by Patrick McManus.
As Officer Jeannie Lewis, Ali Johnson was played by Ali Johnson.
She played Kara Bozwick. Dylan Roberts played the role of Sergeant Morgey Silva.
K. C. Collins played Drury.
Edie Inksetter was the actress that played the role of Detective Deborah Kraus. Nazneen Contractor was the one who played the role of Coroner Chada.
Detective Tim O'Brien was played by Thomas Mitchell. Chad Camilleri played the part of Benny Wrights. Speez was played by Christopher Ramsay.
Charlie Emmerson was played by Frank Licari.
Genelle Williams played Lisa Banks in the film. Officer Pat Jones was played by Trevor Gretzky.
Chris Rock contacted Lionsgate with his Spiral proposal as a chance to revitalize the Saw series as well as his own career.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Chris Rock reveals that he met Michael Burns, the vice chairman of Lionsgate, during a friend's wedding in Brazil, and that he decided to make a horror picture, even though he wanted to incorporate some humorous aspects. With the help of Lionsgate, Rock came up with the notion of expanding the series. This is a legendary horror series that has been revived by humor, creative vision, and passion from Rock, says Lionsgate's CEO Joe Drake. Rock's approach was totally respectful of the tradition of the material while reinvigorating the brand. Lionsgate was said to be in talks for a ninth Saw picture in January 2018, however the Spierig Brothers would not be involved. In an interview with Screen Rant, the filmmakers stated that their picture lays the groundwork for future sequels to the franchise. Twisted Pictures and Jigsaw authors Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger began work on a sequel in April of last year.
After Jigsaw came out, Stolberg and Goldfinger were talking to series veterans Mark Burg and Oren Koules about making a new Saw movie about only John Kramer/Jigsaw and none of his other apprentices. Burg and Koules called Stolberg and Goldfinger to tell them about Rock's ideas for a new movie, and Rock called them soon after to talk about his idea. Before that, other writers had tried to get Lionsgate interested in their ideas for the next Saw movie, but none of them were successful. Stolberg and Goldfinger, on the other hand, had come up with eight different versions of the movie before Rock came along and combined his idea with theirs. Burg and Koules told the pair to make a pitch for Rock. Stolberg and Goldfinger did this, and both Lionsgate and Rock liked their pitch. This led them to write their first draft, which was approved a week after it was turned in. Rock helped Stolberg and Goldfinger write the story and rewrote parts of it when they needed to.
Despite discussions after the first test screening and through post-production, Stolberg told Bloody Disgusting that Jigsaw was never included in any draft of Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)'s screenplay. They felt that including Jigsaw would alter the story they were trying to tell, not to diminish the character but to take the franchise in a new direction. Stolberg felt that due to the franchise's timeline, any possible connection John Kramer could have had with William Schenk / The Spiral: From the Book of Saw Killer should have been when the latter was still a child; Stolberg and Goldfinger proposed at one point to have an after-credits sequence where Kramer met a young Schenk after the murder of the latter's father and bonded with him, possibly giving him the puppet he later uses as the Spiral (2021) Killer.
Spiral's casting selections
Rock played Zeke Banks. Rock, Stolberg, and Goldfinger conceived the character from conversations they had before writing the screenplay, with Rock wondering what he would do if he were the original Saw protagonist Dr. Lawrence Gordon and forced to cut off his own foot. They decided it would be interesting if Rock played a cop ostracized by his colleagues.
Out of curiosity, Samuel L. Jackson volunteered to portray Marcus Banks, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. He wanted to try something new. As Captain Angie Garza, Marisol Nichols was chosen over a male actor despite being a Saw enthusiast and having chosen to watch David Fincher's Seven instead of the prior films in order to prepare for the part. Initially, Patrick McManus auditioned for the part of Detective Marv Bozwick, but was summoned back to portray Peter Dunleavy while Dan Petronijevic was cast as Bozwick.
Max Minghella, a lover of both horror and buddy-cop films, took on the part of William Schenk / The Spiral: From the Book of Saw Killer because he longed to feature in a picture with straightforward story-telling like the buddy police of his childhood like 48 Hrs., and when he read the screenplay, he thought it this article was that, as well as a Saw film.
How was the experience of shooting Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)?
Spiral (2021)'s marketing strategy
Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) is out in theaters and on streaming services.
How did people rate Spiral: From the Book of Saw?
Darren Lynn Bousman claims that the movie was granted an NC-17 classification by the Motion Picture Association eleven times before the director was eventually able to trim enough sequences to achieve a R certificate.
What was the box office take for Spiral?
Spiral (2021) was released with Those Who Wish Me Dead, Profile, and Finding You in the United States and Canada, with an estimated opening weekend total of $10–15 million from 2,811 theaters. The picture generated $3.7 million on its opening day (including $750,000 from Thursday night screenings), bringing the total to $9 million, which was lower than expected. It went on to earn $8.8 million in its first weekend, making it the franchise's lowest opening weekend. The respondents were 56% male and 75% under the age of 35, with a favorable answer being more common on the East Coast of the United States. The next weekend, it stayed in first position, plummeting 48 percent to $4.6 million.
On the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, 37 percent of 221 reviewers gave it a good review, giving it a 5.1/10 score. Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) proposes a fascinating new approach for the Saw series, even if the gruesome whole is less than its pieces, according to the site's critical consensus.
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave the movie a score of 40 out of 100 based on the opinions of 33 critics, which means that the reviews were mixed or average.
A separate film reviewer noted the script maintained the grizzled-cop-movie tone and creates several interesting characters, but the narrative was repetitive, the mystery was annoyingly obvious, and the inventive deaths were less imaginative than before. Spiral attempted to strike a balance between respectability and entertainment value, but failed miserably.
Many film reviews praised Spiral: From the Book of Saw as a really terrifying, albeit unevenly paced, detective thriller, while criticizing its writing for failing to depict the potential tensions between its major characters' father-son relationship.
Others praised the performance and Spiral: From the Book of Saw's simple yet captivating idea, although some made criticisms of the voice actor's impression of Kermit the Frog in the role of the unknown assassin. They also noted how gruesome the gore and screaming scenes are for a real audience. They are, in fact, the enticement.
A film reviewer gave the film a bad review, noting that Spiral fumbles through its fundamental enigma without elegance or flair, or even much thinking. Even the death traps lack any kind of originality. His main criticism of Spiral (2021) was that below all of the fluff, there is a better, smarter picture waiting to be discovered. There are just too many fast cuts and scenes that pick up the tempo quickly. The horrible speech that's blasted at full volume is unpleasant. For a Hollywood picture, Spiral: From the Book of Saw has the potential to be both subversive and relevant, but it's almost irritating in how little it appears to care about any of this in the film. It merely wants to bleed a lot of blood, which it does.
Is Spiral (2021) going to have a sequel?
Twisted Pictures confirmed in April 2021 that they were making a sequel movie called "Saw X." But Bousman said it was an early announcement that surprised him and the producers of the movie. He said that just because they made Spiral (2021), the Saw series doesn't end. Even though Spiral: From the Book of Saw has already come out, that doesn't mean that there won't be a Saw IX. This isn't the ninth movie in the Saw series. Jigsaw may easily be followed by Saw IX. I think they are waiting to see how Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) does and how people react to it before deciding what will happen next. Josh Stolberg said the script was finished that same year in December.
How likely is it that there will be a Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)-themed television series?
Kevin Beggs, chairman of Lionsgate TV, told Deadline Hollywood in April 2021 that the company is in early talks to develop a Spiral TV series with Mark Burg and Oren Koules' Twisted Television productions.