Leigh Whannell: biography, personal life, films, photos

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Each individual, in order to become truly happy, needs to realize their unique potential, find their purpose. People who have realized their true calling not only do what they love, bring inner satisfaction, do good for others, but also, importantly, are financially independent.

Leigh Whannell has long tried to combine the three incarnations. The filmmaker realized himself as a director, scriptwriter and actor. He worked quite fruitfully with James Wan for a long time. The creative tandem created the world-famous Saw and Astral franchises. The last more notable project outside of these epics was the comedy-horror Cutis, for which Whannell wrote the screenplay. But after the release of the, frankly, weak directorial debut of Astral 3, the controversial author dramatically changed the vector of creativity, replacing James Wan with Jason Bloom and creating the sci-fi action Upgrade. He seems to have found his calling.

Earlier creativity

Leigh Whannell was born on a frosty January morning in 1977. As soon as he learned to read and write, he began to try his hand at writing. Love tohe inherited literature from his mother, cinema from his father, who worked as a cameraman on local television. Lee wrote his first authored short story at the age of four, it was about a frog who was desperately looking for a flute after losing it. According to the adult screenwriter who has already taken place, it was a real masterpiece. No one forced the child to compose, he loved to write stories on his own initiative.

Fateful meeting

As a teenager, he already wrote reviews for TV, and at the age of 18 he began attending film school classes at the University of Melbourne. During his studies, Lee met another creative young man. It was James Wan. Their acquaintance turned out to be truly fateful. Leigh Whannell has worked as a film critic for many Australian ABC television shows for some time. After playing a cameo role in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, he tried his hand at voicing game characters.

From debutants to masters

As a term paper, aspiring filmmakers Leigh Whannell and James Wan presented the mentor with the short film "Saw", for which they wrote the script themselves. Their teacher was so shocked by what he saw that he sent the project to Hollywood. A few months later, the creative tandem was invited to Hollywood to work on a full-length version of their student masterpiece, and Saw: The Game of Survival was born. After the triumph, Leigh Whannell did not want to start working on a sequel, but still succumbed to the temptation. Later, he wrote scripts only for the second and third parts, in allsubsequent acted as a producer. It is known for certain that, while working on the creation of the famous project, Leigh Whannell suffered from incessant migraine attacks, even underwent medical treatment. They say that the attacks of pain and impressions from visiting clinics, meeting with patients who are being treated with terrible diagnoses, prompted him to create the author's project "X-ray" (X-Ray).

Atmosphere of genuine horror

The undisputed hallmark of the "Saw" series of paintings, in which Leigh Whannell acted as a screenwriter, are the terrifying contraptions of torture and murder of Jigsaw's unfortunate victims. Their diversity was one of the reasons why fans of the franchise have been waiting for the release of new parts. The viewer, missing the atmosphere of genuine horror, singled out "Saw" from a series of other horror films for real on-screen cruelty. The sight is certainly not for the faint of heart. After Lee remained in the project as a producer, the films did not change the traditional plot, but with regards to “living and murder”, the authors raised the bar uncompromisingly and desperately, but the success of the Whannell-Wan tandem could not. Not without reason, according to critics, it was they who introduced a new term into the cinematic lexicon - “torture porn”.

Between the first and second

Leigh Whannell's filmography as screenwriter includes the occasional witty comedy-horror cutis, in which he co-starred. The film turned out to be a decently solid horror comedy, with a verynice casting and a dashing concept, which, unfortunately, was not fully realized. Almost all the characters in the film are stereotyped, but not annoying. Whannell's character was especially successful. The character turned out to be frankly asocial, with a whole bunch of all sorts of oddities.

After leaving one franchise, the screenwriter immediately joined another, called Astral. When starting work on the original film, the authors hardly thought that it would launch another horror epic. Between the release of the first and second parts, the gap is two years only because Jason Blum wanted to make a sequel only with the participation of D. Wan and L. Whannell. The creative cinematographic union did not deceive the expectations of the filmmaker, despite the PG-13 rating, without blood flooding the screen and gutted entrails, both Astrals can easily make any adult viewer stutter.

As a director

As director Leigh Whannell is known for two projects - "Astral 3" (2015) and "Upgrade" (2018).

The first is a prequel to the 2010 film, telling details about the medium Alice Renier, who helped the Lambert family cope with evil spirits and demons in two parts. Although many film experts have said that Whannell's directorial part is weaker than the previous ones, the film works as it should. It frightens at the right moments, reveals details in the characteristics of the main character and guarantees boring viewing. It is not for nothing that the director, in order to achieve naturalism in the reactions of the characters, used a car horn. BUTStephanie Scott, who played Queen Brenner, was not only forced to listen to dark music, but also periodically locked in a closet.

In the recent premiere of "Astral 4: The Last Key", Adam Robitel took over the director's chair, Leigh Whannell returned to work on the script.

Best author's project

In March of this year, a photo of Leigh Whannell graced the title poster of Upgrade. The author's project of the filmmaker is an inventive fantasy action, once again convincing that even in 2018 genre cinema can surprise.

Whannell, having secondary plot moves available, put together a story that does not cause an annoying feeling of deja vu. On the plot surface of the project there is revenge, conspiracies and corporations pursuing an aggressive policy, but it is curious how the director builds an intrigue out of them.

The quality of the film, its external ingenuity was not hindered by either a modest budget or meager scenery. In this project, Leigh Whannell fully realizes her creative potential, not embarrassed, diluting the fights with episodes of exploitative cruelty, but unlike all parts of the Saw, during which the viewer developed immunity to flying intestines and severed limbs, in this film she is great gets on the nerves of the beholder.

Actor and family man

Having tried to realize himself in the acting field in The Matrix and Saw, Leigh Whannell graced the films Dog Paradise, Endangered Breed, Sorry, Death Sentence and all with his presenceAstrals.

In 2009, Whannell married the beautiful actress Corbett Tuck, who appeared in the first "Astral" and then starred with her husband in the third part. The couple has a daughter, Sabine, and twins, Jones Gray and Rena Rivera.