James Wan

James Wan (born 26 February 1977) is an Australian filmmaker.

He has primarily worked in the horror genre as the co-creator of the Saw and Insidious franchises and the creator of The Conjuring Universe.

The lattermost is the highest-grossing horror franchise at over $2 billion.

Wan is also the founder of film and television production company Atomic Monster.

James Wan was born on 26 February 1977 in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia to Chinese-Malaysian parents.

Wan and his family moved to Perth, Western Australia when he was seven.

He attended Lake Tuggeranong College in Canberra before returning to Perth as an adult.

Wan relocated from Perth to Melbourne, where he attended RMIT University, he graduated from RMIT with a Bachelor of Arts in Media in 1999.

Prior to 2003, Wan and his friend, fellow filmmaker Leigh Whannell, had begun writing a script for a horror film, citing their dreams and fears as inspiration for its plot.

Upon completing the script, Wan and Whannell had wanted to select an excerpt from their script, later to be known as Saw and film it to pitch their film to studios.

With the help of Charlie Clouser, who had composed the score for the film, and a few stand-in actors, Wan and Whannell shot the film with a relatively low budget.

Whannell also decided to star in the film as Adam Stanheight, one of the film's main protagonists.

After the release of the full-length Saw, the film was met with overwhelming success in the box office both domestically and internationally.

The film ended up grossing $55 million in America, and $48 million in other countries, totaling over US$103 million worldwide.

This was over $100 million more than the production budget.

This led the studio to green-light the sequel Saw II and later the rest of the Saw franchise.

Since its inception, the Saw films have become the highest grossing horror franchise of all time worldwide in unadjusted dollars.

Beginning his career with the Saw franchise, Wan made his feature directorial debut with his first film in 2004.

The franchise became commercially successful and grossed more than $1 billion globally.

Wan directed Saw (2004) and co-wrote Saw III (2006).

Meanwhile, he and Whannell have predominantly served as executive producers to the sequels Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D, Jigsaw, Spiral and Saw X.

In 2007, Wan directed two featured films.

The first was the horror film Dead Silence, which was the result of advice from Wan and Whannell's agent at the time; Wan and Whannell have since stated that the film was a negative experience for them.

Dead Silence featured Australian actor Ryan Kwanten and is based on the premise of a legend, whereby the ghost of a ventriloquist, Mary Shaw, removes the tongue of any person who screams in its presence.

Rather than a gore movie, Wan described the film as "a creepy doll movie. It's in the spirit of those old Twilight Zone episodes or Hammer Horror Films. Very old-school."

The film grossed over $22 million against a production budget of $20 million.

It received negative reviews from critics.

Wan's second directorial film of 2007 was the vigilante action drama film Death Sentence, a film adapted from the 1975 novel of the same name by Brian Garfield that was written as the sequel to Death Wish.

The film's protagonist (Kevin Bacon) was a father seeking revenge for his murdered son, who was killed by a local gang.

Whannell played a minor character as one of the gang members.

Wan described the film as "a raw and gritty, 70s styled revenge thriller ... It's my arthouse movie with guns."

The films grossed $17 million against a production budget of $20 million.

Similar to Wan's previous film, it received negative reviews.

Following a period of setbacks, Wan found new success with the Insidious series, in which he directed the first film in 2010 and its 2013 sequel.

The same year as the second Insidious, Wan directed the first Conjuring film to critical and commercial success.

In the United States alone, Saw is the second highest grossing horror franchise, behind only the Friday the 13th films by a margin of $10 million.

Outside of horror, Wan directed Furious 7 (2015), the seventh installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, and the DC Extended Universe superhero films Aquaman (2018) and its sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023).

Both Furious 7 and Aquaman grossed over $1 billion, making Wan the eighth director with two films to reach the milestone.

He is the 16th highest-grossing director of all time as of 2021, with his films having grossed over US$3.7 billion worldwide.

He served as the director of the second installment in 2016 and produced subsequent films in the franchise.