The screenwriter and star of Dead Silence, a haunting supernatural film about dolls. The film was in production for years before it was finally released in 2007 and met with negative reception, by which time, Whannell had already written two wildly successful Saw sequels. Whannell blames his bad experience making Dead Silence as the reason he resisted working with big film studios for so long.

Leigh Whannell moved on from Saw and is directing his own scripts. The most recent successes, Upgrade in 2018 and The Invisible Man in 2020, received widespread acclaim from critics and general audiences. Whannell and his long-time friend James Wan (director of Aquaman) started as independent filmmakers who were offered a small budget to create Leigh Whannell's worst movie experience in filmmaking was thus writing Dead Silence, because when he pitched Billy the Puppet and Mary Shaw's story, the studio took over and hired a script doctor who reportedly overbearingly policed every change he made to his own screenplay.

Writing Dead Silence Taught Leigh Whannell What To Avoid In Hollywood Filmmaking

Up until Upgrade and The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell has steered clear of working with major studios when producing his films. The doctoring of his script was so intense over the course of Dead Silence's pre-production, according to Whannell, that the final product of the film scarcely feels like a movie he's played a hand in making. On the same blog, he mentions how he's "almost glad Dead Silence happened, because it gave me an extreme, coal-face lesson in what not to do." Current director Leigh Whannell refuses to sell a pitch and only writes "scripts on spec" now because Hollywood insinuated itself too heavily in his creative process. Whannell its he's "gun-shy" about working with studios mainly because of his experience writing Dead Silence and that he's more willing to make independent films because "they don't have the money to bring in script doctors!"

Leigh Whannell may have resolved his negative feelings towards working with studios since he is slated to direct The Green Hornet and Kato reboot. The lessons he learned as an indie filmmaker appear to have stayed with him and bolstered his career, however, since he has achieved massive success with even Whannell's most recent film, The Invisible Man. Fortunately, the experience Leigh Whannell had writing Dead Silence appears set up to help his filmmaking career in the long run, even if the short term experience wasn't a pleasant one.