Craig welcomes Leigh Whannell, writer of the Saw and Insidious franchises, to discuss low-budget filmmaking, sequels on sequels, the horror landscape and his new movie, Upgrade.
We also answer listener questions about sharing an agent with your writing partner and the ethics of hiring someone to punch up your own script.
Links:
* Thanks for joining us, [Leigh Whannell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Whannell)!
* [Leigh](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1191481/) wrote [Saw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_(2004_film)), [Insidious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insidious_(film)), and, most recently, Upgrade, (here’s the fairly violent [trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEnRNIvEKu8)).
* [I’ll Be Gone in the Dark](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062319787/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Michelle McNamara
* Matthew Lillard’s company, Beadle & Grimm’s Pandemonium Warehouse, is releasing a luxury Dungeons and Dragons campaign called [Platinum Edition Dungeons & Dragons: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist](https://www.beadleandgrimms.com/platinum-edition/), which is available to pre-order.
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](http://johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [Leigh Whannell](https://twitter.com/LWhannell) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_354.mp3).
**UPDATE 6-20-18:** The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/scriptnotes-ep-354-upgrade-transcript).