Summary
- Saw X earns the best opening weekend for the franchise in over a decade, surpassing the two previous entries in the series.
- The movie’s projected box office earnings for the opening weekend are $18.6 million, slightly below expectations but higher than recent installments Spiral and Jigsaw.
- If the projections hold, Saw X will have the sixth-best opening in the franchise’s history, outperforming the original Saw film.
Saw X has earned the best opening weekend for the franchise in over a decade. The movie, which opened in theaters on September 29, is the tenth entry in the horror franchise, which originally ran from 2004’s Saw through 2010’s Saw: The Final Chapter before it was resurrected in the 2017 legacy sequel Jigsaw and the 2021 soft reboot Spiral: From the Book of Saw. Set between the events of Saw and Saw II, it follows Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) exacting bloody revenge on a team of medical scammers.
Per Deadline, the Saw X box office is projected to earn an opening weekend of $18.6 million. While this is slightly below expectations, it still outgrosses the openings of Spiral ($8.75 million) and Jigsaw ($16.6 million) as well as 2009’s Saw VI ($14.1 million). If these projections hold, it will also open higher than the original Saw ($18.3 million), giving it the sixth-best opening in the franchise overall.
Could Saw X Earn a Sequel?
The Saw X opening weekend is defined by slight disappointments. In addition to opening somewhat below its roughly $20 million early projections, it also took No. 2 for the weekend behind the animated sequel PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie. However, given its place in the overall franchise ranking, this could still be enough for the movie to earn a sequel.
Neither Jigsaw nor Spiral earned enough for the franchise to continue down the narrative path that either set up. However, despite Spiral earning the lowest worldwide box office of the entire franchise, it was still followed by another Saw entry two years later. This seems to show that producers saw potential in the franchise, at least if they returned it to its roots. This could be a good sign for another sequel, then, though this result could potentially be damaging if Saw X was actually a last-ditch attempt to put the Saw movies back on the right track.
However, there is one element that is working heavily in the favor of Saw 11. The new movie only came with a price tag of $13 million, meaning that it has already earned back its entire production budget in a single weekend. The Saw X ending also leaves room for more stories to be told in its pre-Saw II timeline, should any filmmaker wish to do so.
Source: Deadline