No Saw next year?

Don’t get your hopes up. The SAW franchise isn’t over. Listen, long after it stops making significant money at the box office (right around SAW VI or VII), it’ll continue its life on DVD and when the profits of that die (say around SAW XII OR XIII), it’ll continue forever online.

And, let’s face it, like a boozy, alcoholic uncle whom you can count on to get shit-faced and make inappropriate jokes while lamenting his life’s unfortunate shame spiral at a family reunion, for the last four years, we’ve come to expect a SAW film to be released every October. Lionsgate, however, seems to be only interested in cashing in on the latest back-to-back filming craze. According to the folks at Bloody Disgusting, they plan on using 2008 to film SAW V and VI back-to-back and proceed to release them starting in 2009.

They’ve apparently already recruited director David Hackl for at least one of the two films and already have SAW IV writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton thinking of creative torture traps for both films. SAW IV opens this Friday.