Last week, Screen Rant gave you a first look at an upcoming horror-thriller from the writers of three of the Saw movies called The Collector. The film follows an ex-con who plans a heist at his new boss's country house, only to discover the house has been "claimed" by another, far worse, criminal who has rigged the place with a maze of lethal traps.

Sounds a bit similar to the Saw movies, right? Well, that may be because The Collector was almost a prequel to that successful gore-franchise!

In an interview with Bloody-Disgusting, The Collector co-writer Patrick Melton talked about the upcoming movie and how it's being pushed pretty hard by the studio. And going by what he says, I guess the similarities between this and the Saw franchise weren't an accident:

"Well, the story is that Leigh [Whanell - Saw 1, 2 and 3 writer] didn't want to do any more after 3. So, they were looking for writers. They didn't have much of a story for 4, and an executive over at Twisted read The Midnight Man and thought it could be a good prequel, explaining a traumatic incident that happened to John Kramer (Jigsaw) when [he was] young... The idea got squashed, but the script as a sample is what got us the deal to write Saw 4, 5, & 6."

Considering The Collector script was originally considered as a prequel to Saw, loads of bloody violence are expected. Melton explains how violent and bloody The Collector actually is:

"It's pretty hardcore. We didn't necessarily set out to make an overly violent or bloody movie, but when our lead character finds himself in the deadly situations of the film, it gets pretty violent and bloody... The violence, though, is organic. There is no gore for gore sake. When someone is being hurt, there is a purpose. Information is either being elicited or our hero is hurting himself in order to save others. That being said, by fade out, this might end up being the hardest R in theaters this year."

"We got an NC-17 for "Pervasive, sadistic bloody violence. I believe we were the first film to get that. It took four times at the MPAA to get that down to an R. But as I said, it's pretty hard."

For more on The Collector from co-writer Patrick Melton, you can head over to Bloody-Disgusting.

Is The Collector TOO similar to Saw? Both are about a lead "hero" trying to survive contraptions and situations that a (presumably) sadistic killer has set up. The only real difference from what I can tell is that The Collector killer doesn't have a moral motive as Jigsaw did, and presumably he just does it for the sake of doing it. That might be interesting as it raises the question of how do you reason or negotiate with The Joker someone like that?

But you've got to wonder: would The Collector been better off as a Saw prequel, rather than a seeming carbon-copy that moviegoers could potentially view it as?

The trailer certainly has me interested, and I'm willing to give it a go to see if what Melton says about it not being gory just for the sake of gore actually turns out to be the case (fingers crossed!).

Do you think The Collector is too similar to the Saw franchise? Do you think it would have been better off as a Saw prequel?

The Collector will hit US theatres on July 31st, 2009.

Source: Bloody-Digusting