The Eleventh 'Saw' Movie Has Hit a Snag, Possibly for Political Reasons

Development hell is real and it spares no one. A film could have an all-star, Oscar-winning cast who all want to sign on but the script might not be right. The director could have the whole movie storyboarded, but the lead actor refuses to approve the script. Some studios go through regime changes which can cause a movie to change hands creatively multiple times, yet Ezra Miller stays signed on through the whole process (that last one isn’t about anything specific, I promise). Sometimes, people just have to guess.

That’s kind of what’s happening with Saw XI right now. The tenth Saw film was a massive success. It made back almost ten times its budget and was a hit with critics and fans. Despite being over two decades old the horror franchise still has some life in it. An eleventh film was greenlit soon after the film’s success with a September 2024 release date. That month came and went without a new Saw film, and now, people are asking writer Patrick Melton what’s up.

Melton and his screenwriting partner Marcus Dunstan got their start as the chosen screenwriters for the horror season of Project Greenlight (the only one I watched). They’ve secured their horror bonafides since then, including writing four Saw films. They wrote a script for eleven, but things have gone quiet since then. “We haven’t heard anything since May,” Melton explained to the Hollywood Reporter. “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.” It wouldn’t be the first time a studio gets in the way of a no-brainer decision, but could this one be politically motivated?

There are no details about the new film, but Melton compared it to Saw VI, which saw Jigsaw targeting health insurance executives. That film gained renewed interest when United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in December. “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,” Melton explained. “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.” It would have taken some spectacular foresight on Lionsgate’s part, but a movie about angry citizens looking to a murderous vigilante for help likely wouldn’t be embraced by the current presidential administration.

Trump and his cronies have made it clear that they will attempt to punish people who are critical of them. There is no real rhyme or reason for who they will attack. Could Lionsgate have been trying to get ahead of any criticism they might face? Would they have shelved a successful franchise to save their own asses? Maybe they viewed producing the new movie as willfully placing themselves into one of Jigsaw’s signature traps. If the film is as timely as Melton says, it’s very likely the target of Jigsaw’s fury could be a Trump or even Elon Musk type. They certainly wouldn’t be on his nice list. We won’t know for sure unless an executive quits and gives a revealing interview in the future, but I won’t put my conspiracy theory cap away just yet.

What I will disregard as coincidental is Melton’s big reveal at the end of the piece. The writer went to college with Brian Thompson. “We were at Iowa at the same time, so we graduated the same year in 1997,” he noted. The two weren’t close, but Melton said, “I can tell you Brian was pretty normal at school. He drank Bud Light and was a good guy.” Bud Light?! He’s just like me, for real! Maybe I’ve been looking at everything all wrong.