‘They’re not gonna leave money on the table’: A saga that took 19 years, 10 movies, and a billion dollars to get good reviews is far from over

Having already recouped its modest $13 million budget four times over at the global box office in its first week of release, Saw X is only going to edge further and further into the black as its theatrical run continues.

Of course, none of the many entries in the long-running horror saga have technically bombed given that they don’t cost much to produce, which in turn has seen it emerge as one of the most profitable IPs in cinematic history, one that’s earned in excess of a billion dollars worldwide on combined budgets of just over $100 million.

However, the one thing that had always escaped the series was critical acclaim, at least until Saw X shocked the world by landing its first-ever Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, blowing its nine predecessors out of the water with a mighty 82 percent approval rating.

Even if it sucked, there’s a strong chance at least one more sequel would emerge, with director Kevin Greutert essentially admitting to The Direct that it’s destined to happen given the margins are already heavily in its favor.

“Well, you know, I know the people involved well, and they’re ordinary humans. And if this film makes a lot of money, they’re not gonna leave money on the table if there are future directions to go. I mean, when you say, though, that this film leaves open threads, it doesn’t necessarily answer a lot of questions that are cliffhangers for the other episodes. But for this one, some characters live and we don’t necessarily see what happens to them after that. I’m hoping that the audience does want to know what happens to them after that and that we someday can make another Saw that does answer it because I love these characters.”

Saw X didn’t drop in the long-running property’s first credits scene for nothing, so it’s really more a question of “when” the 11th chapter gets announced as opposed to “if.”