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October 31, 2005
Saw II seen from down under
Australia's Age celebrates a local success that's overseas: "Saw II, made by Melbourne masters of horror Leigh Whannell and James Wan, scared up the big bucks at the North American box office over the Halloween weekend..."
"While critics have called the fright flick grisly and nauseating even for the horror movie genre, it still hauled in more viewers than any other movie in the US last weekend.... Whannell and Wan, both graduates of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's media arts course, were struggling to make a living in Melbourne before US film company Evolution Entertainment agreed to shoot SAW in Los Angeles. Whannell, who wrote and starred in SAW, and Wan, who directed it, made the decision of their lives when Evolution offered them a deal." Of the original $1m production, The Age reports, "Instead of taking an upfront payment, the 28-year-olds opted to take a cut of the profits of SAW, including merchandising... It made them millionaires." (Wan's an exec prod on the sequel; Whannel polished the director's original script, which was repurposed from something he had already written.)
Posted by pride at October 31, 2005 05:42 PM
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