James Wan

James Wan
Wan at WonderCon in March 2013
Born	(1977-02-27) 27 February 1977 (age 39) Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
Residence	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality	Australian
Occupation	Film director, film producer, screenwriter
Years active	1999–present

James Wan (born 27 February 1977) is a Malaysian-born Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer.

Wan is widely known for directing the horror film Saw (2004) and creating Billy the Puppet. He has also directed Dead Silence and Death Sentence (both 2007), Insidious (2011), The Conjuring and Insidious: Chapter 2 (both 2013), Furious 7 (2015), and The Conjuring 2 (2016).

Wan was born in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, and is of Malaysian Chinese descent. He is an Australian citizen.

James relocated from Perth to Melbourne, where he attended RMIT University.

Before his success in the mainstream film industry, he made his first feature-length film, Stygian, with Shannon Young, which won "Best Guerrilla Film" at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF) in 2000.

Prior to 2003, Wan and Leigh Whannell had begun writing a script based for a horror film, citing inspiration from their dreams and fears. Upon completing the script, Leigh and James 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, Leigh and James shot the film with relatively no budget. Leigh had decided to star in the film as well.

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 dollars in America, and 48 million dollars in other countries, totaling over US$103 million worldwide. This was over 100 million dollars profit, over 80 times the production budget. This green-lit the sequel Saw II, and later the rest of the Saw franchise based on the yearly success of the previous installment. Since its inception, Saw has become the highest grossing horror franchise of all time worldwide in unadjusted dollars. In the United States only, Saw is the second highest grossing horror franchise, behind only the Friday the 13th films by a margin of $10 million.