Saw XI is already coming out next year

If you don’t count 2021’s Spiral, which was of course only From The Book Of Saw, there were six years between Jigsaw and this year’s revival Saw X. And there were seven years between Jigsaw and Saw 3D. But it was an annual franchise before that, with a Saw movie coming out every October from 2004 to 2010. Now, after the success of Saw X, the series is getting back to its roots—no, not by putting Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell in a room together and asking them to cut each other’s legs off—but by releasing another entry a year after the last entry.

Actually, this one will be less than a year, with Lionsgate announcing on Instagram that Saw XI will be released on September 27, 2024 (364 days after the release of the last Saw movie). That’s exciting for fans of the series, but it is slightly concerning that Lionsgate didn’t announce a single damn thing other than that. As noted by Variety, the studio has not shared any further details about the movie and hasn’t offered any other follow-up comments (though we know writers Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger won’t be returning), so hopefully someone actually has a plan and this isn’t just the studio saying “hey, let’s make more money!”

This is the point where we have to acknowledge the convoluted-as-hell Saw timeline: Saw X takes place just after the first movie, because Jigsaw—a.k.a. John Kramer—died in Saw III and the subsequent movies were all about plans he had either laid for after his death or plans that had already been enacted but that he never felt the need to mention in the other movies. It’s all very twisty, so Saw XI will either have to continue the prequel thing or introduce more convolusion to the saga.

Here’s a pitch: It’s the near future. Jigsaw’s crimes and writings have been fed into a chatbot, creating a killer computer that blackmails people into helping it create evil torture games and ultimately transforming Jigsaw into his most evil form by putting real torture game designers and writers out of work.