'Saw' Movies Are Just Going to Keep On Coming

When Saw VI not only failed to live up to its predecessors at the box office but also failed to generate much heat after opening day ($7 million on its first Friday, about $20 million in the three weeks since), you started to hear some whispers about Lionsgate pushing up the end of the franchise. But you didn't hear that from Lionsgate. In fact, the company's vice chairman, Michael Burns, put Lionsgate's plans as bluntly as he could: "As long as we make money on it we'll keep doing this." Addressing a crowd at the Media and Money conference in New York, Burns confirmed that the films are still a tremendous earner individually, to say nothing of how much coin Jigsaw has generated versus the expenditures in the past six years. The total budgets are around $50 million and the worldwide dollars are just under $700 million, nearly a billion when you add in DVD. So these movies aren't going anywhere. They could lose money on a bunch of them in a row and still be reaping profits from the first four or five entries in the series. Incidentally, the seventh movie will be in 3-D, and the most recent word (which did not come from Burns this week) is that there will be two more films beyond that, giving the franchise nine installments.

Comments

[Wickedlycool]

Money makes the world go round...

[josh]

I'm glad.. There isn't any other film franchise that I look forward to every year. For some it's Harry Potter, or Pirates of the Caribbean, but myself it's the horror spectacle that is Saw. Since the original film made its debut in the Cannes Film Festival, I've followed this convoluted, yet intriguing storyline. The quality of these pictures goes out to the dedication of the cast and crew. It isn't often that this same group return year after year. Thus being said, it's wonderful to watch peripheral characters in the first or second film have leading roles in the later features. This I believe is one of the main attractions to the franchise. As long as the writers continue to trick even such an avid fan as myself, then I say keep them coming. I hope to write one myself soon!

[Me]

It debuted at Sundance, not Cannes.