James Wan
James Wan | |
|---|---|
 James Wan attending Comic Con, 2007. | |
| Occupation(s) | film director, producer, screenwriter |
James Wan (born February 27 1977) is an Chinese producer, screenwriter, and film director. He is most widely known for directing the horror film Saw. He also directed Dead Silence and Death Sentence.
Biography
James Wan was born in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia of Chinese ethnicity. He was later brought up in Perth, Western Australia from a young age. It was his childhood dream to make films from the age of 11. He followed this dream when he went onto study at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, completing his Bachelor of Arts degree.[1]
Before making it big in the film industry he made his first feature film Stygian with Shannon Young which won Best Guerilla Film at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2000.[2]
He met Leigh Whannell while in film school. He would later go on to direct the 2004 horror flick, Saw with the help of Whannell, who wrote the script. Wan and Whannell made a short version of the film to showcase the script. Whannell played the main character of David. The three producers who saw the short film and read Whannell's screenplay agreed to produce the film before Wan and Whannell even landed in Los Angeles. Wan and Whannell decided to forgo upfront salary in return for gross profits. Shot for a low US$1.2 million, the producers had a straight-to-DVD release in mind. However, Saw' was to become a surprise record breaking theatrical horror franchise, making Wan and Whannell rich.[citation needed]</ref>
Since creating the franchise, Wan produced the sequels Saw II and Saw III, and served as executive producer for Saw IV. Wan has been busy creating other works with his film school partner Whannell. In 2007 he went on to increase his filmography with another horror movie, Dead Silence, and the action drama Death Sentence.[3] Having worked on his last three films back to back, Wan told CraveOnline that he is ready for "a bit of time off just to chill... but at the same time I'm using this opportunity to write again."[4] Wan also directed a trailer for the survival horror video game Dead Space
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