Tobin Bell Is Somehow Returning As Jigsaw For The Next Saw Movie

Jigsaw is starting to seem a bit like Michael Myers: no matter how many times you kill this dude, he'll just keep coming back. That's right, Tobin Bell is apparently set to return for the next installment of the "Saw" franchise, which will be the tenth in the series if you count last year's in-universe spinoff "Spiral." The news comes from One Take News (via The Hollywood Reporter) today, with the outlet revealing that producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules confirmed the casting in a statement.

While it's totally expected that the franchise that started in 2004 with James Wan's "Saw" would pull out all the stops for a nice, round number like "Saw X," the fact remains that Bell's character died way back in "Saw III." The once anonymous antagonist, who was eventually revealed to be torture trap-obsessed engineer John Kramer, appeared in flashbacks and recordings for several more films. At this point, Bell has been playing a dead character on and off for the past 15 years, so it'll be interesting to see if the new film makes any attempts to de-age the actor for the part — or if it'll just put him in a backward hat again, like when Jigsaw was undercover in a crowd in "Saw 3D."

John Kramer's legacy never dies

Though the film is set for a fall 2023 release date, it sounds like production on the next "Saw" film is off to a promising start. "Spiral" screenwriter Josh Stolberg spoke about the script on Twitter back in March, calling the script his favorite of the three "Saw" films he's written so far. In December 2021, he also alluded to the script in a tweet, saying, "What I can promise you is that this is gonna make John Kramer fans very happy!" Indeed, what better news is there for fans of the original trapmaker returning to the franchise for the first time since 2017's "Jigsaw"?

Although the "Saw" series clearly made a mistake killing off their big bad when the well of sequel ideas was far from dry, the franchise has done a decent job expanding the character's legacy with assorted copycat killers. In the most recent installment, which starred Chris Rock as Detective Zeke Banks, his partner Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella) was revealed to be a copycat in a story that was all about police corruption. In other sequels, the killers have been revealed to be converts of Jigsaw, who continued his work after his death — sometimes after surviving the traps themselves.

The next "Saw" film is set for an October 27, 2023 release.