James Wan left the Saw franchise because he "felt [he] had already made the movie [he] wanted to make" with the first film.

After creating the horror series with the original 2004 film, Wan, 48, and Leigh Whannell, 49, ultimately stepped down from the franchise following 2006's Saw III, and Wan has now explained why he chose to walk away from his creation.

During an interview with Bloody Disgusting, The Conjuring director said: "I didn't do the sequels because I felt I had already made the movie I wanted to make.

"Leigh was going to produce, and ultimately, he was going to write [Saw II] … at least one of us has a creative voice that is going to at least shepherd the next one or two movies."

Whannell then recounted how the Saw series evolved once he and Wan had exited.

He said: "James and I had this strange, surreal experience once a year, driving down the street and seeing a billboard for this thing that we created in Melbourne when we were starving ex-film students, and now it's out in the world."


Wan emphasized he and Whannell had not left the Saw series because of a "lack of money".

After directing the first Saw, Wan instead served as an executive producer on its two sequels before leaving in 2006.

Meanwhile, Whannell wrote the story for both Saw II and Saw III before he too exited.

While Whannell had lasted longer than Wan, the scribe admitted he was still apprehensive about being involved in Saw.

He said: "The true story is, I followed James's lead at first. I didn't want to be involved either.

"I was like, 'Yeah, I think I'm done here. I can't think of any more ways to kill someone with a power drill.'"

After Lionsgate bosses reportedly pleaded with Whannell to stay, the writer agreed - but only to end Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) reign once and for all in Saw III.

He explained: "I killed Jigsaw. I was like, 'This is pretty definitive.' Which [Lionsgate] regrets to this day.

"If the producers could go back in time, they wouldn't be killing Hitler, they'd be convincing me not to kill Jigsaw."

Whannell added that neither he nor Wan wanted Saw to be their entire legacy, and so they branched out into other horror stories.

He said: "We had this fear of like, we didn't want Saw to be our epitaph.

"So when we did Insidious, it was a big sigh of relief … because luckily we were not one-hit-wonders."

Following nearly 20 years away from the franchise, Wan and Whannell are returning to Saw for the 11th instalment through Blumhouse Productions, and the director emphasised Jigsaw will also make a comeback.

Wan said: "This is what I'll say. Leigh and I, we're not going to give too much away, but we don't think you can make a Saw movie without Jigsaw. That's the bottom line.

"And ultimately, we want to hark back to the spirit, what Leigh and I love about the original first movie. The original first movie, which is Jigsaw's philosophy and what makes him tick.

"Ultimately, he's a scary guy in the first one, and we want to go back to making a scary Saw movie again, with this omnipresent thing that Jigsaw had in the first film.

"But so it's a really kind of like dig into that. And definitely we want to give the fans what they love about the whole franchise as well, whilst I think it's very important we want to do something new and fresh that hasn't been done before. That's the sale. That's my pitch."