The soft reboot of a billion-dollar franchise that failed so hard it got another sequel instead carves it up on streaming

Despite the enduring popularity and virtually guaranteed box office success the genre has constantly displayed dating back decades and decades, the number of horror franchises to have cracked the cumulative billion-dollar mark at the box office is surprisingly small, but Spiral: From the Book of Saw helped push the trap-happy terrors into the rare club.

The only other scary sagas to have hauled in a combined total of 10 figures or more in ticket sales are The Conjuring Universe, the long-running Alien series, Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich’s six-film run as the stewards of Resident Evil, and Andy Muschietti’s It duology, so it’s definitely rarefied air.

While Spiral‘s tepid run in theaters that saw it earn a little over $40 million can be partly attributed to the pandemic, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the reviews were crushingly disappointing for a soft reboot that saw Chris Rock play a pivotal role as star and producer, with Samuel L. Jackson swinging by to lend support.

In the immediate aftermath, the creative team claimed that Spiral was more than capable of existing on its own without any overt connections to Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw, and a sequel was actively in the works. However, when the next chapter was confirmed… it was a direct continuation of the original mythos that was bringing back Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw, rendering The Book of Saw obsolete.

On the plus side, blood-soaked escapades are always the in thing on streaming, so the reinvention that was instantly cast aside in favor of returning to the well has at least made its mark on-demand this weekend, with FlixPatrol naming Spiral as one of the 10 most-watched titles on Hulu.