James Wan

Biography

James Wan (born 1977) is a film director from Melbourne, Australia of Chinese Ethnicity. He was born in Kuching, Malaysia, but grew up in Perth. Wan is best known for the 2004 horror/thriller Saw which he made with Leigh Whannell, whom he met while in film school. Before that he made his first feature film Stygian with Shannon Young that won Best Guerilla Film at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2000. Then Wan and Whannell made a short film of Saw to showcase the intensity of the script. The film was then financed and produced and became a low-budget sleeper hit in the fall of 2004. Though Wan did not direct the sequel Saw 2 (which came out in the fall of 2005), he and Whannell served as executive producers to the film. However, Whannell wrote the script along with Darren Lynn Bousman. Wan's most recent work is with Whannell, directing Dead Silence (2007). He is also the co-writer of Saw 3 alongside Whannell.