March 19, 2024

The Director James Wan: If ‘Aquaman’ Doesn’t Work, Blame Me

Believe me, “Furious 7” was difficult to make, if not the toughest of my career. But that movie really allowed people to look at me as a more complete filmmaker.

“The Conjuring” hadn’t come out yet, but Chris Morgan, the producer-writer of the “Fast Furious” franchise at the time, had seen “The Conjuring” and he loved it. Around that point, Justin Lin was finishing “Fast Furious 6,” and I think he just needed a break. He wasn’t going to come back to do “7.” So they were kind of scrambling. I talked about what I wanted to bring from my horror filmmaking into the “Fast Furious” world. By that, I meant I wanted to create suspenseful, tension-filled set pieces. And they were excited with what I had to say.

You broke through professionally with the original “Saw” movie, which seems like every filmmaker’s dream. But what happened next?

“Saw” exploded in a big way and created this big, big franchise. But then I couldn’t seem to get out from under its shadow. I only directed the first one, but my name became synonymous with “Saw” and therefore all the negative connotations — I became the father of torture porn. I went off and did “Dead Silence” and “Death Sentence,” two movies that worked hard to break away from the image of “Saw” and ultimately did not work, from a commercial standpoint. That was two strikes against my name and I’m thinking, am I in director’s jail? All the projects that were coming my way were just copycat projects that weren’t special for me. And so, I just held out. Then my buddy Leigh Whannell and I just thought, screw all this. Let’s go back to our low-budget filmmaking roots. That was when we made “Insidious.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/movies/james-wan-aquaman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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