The games have begun for the official Twitter account of the Saw franchise, as an alleged hacker threatened to delete its upcoming spinoff Spiral. This was not just any hacker, however, but a Twitter parody account fittingly called Saw Quotes. The account has reached over ninety thousand followers and has been engaging in a friendly rivalry with the official account as of late. However, that friendly back-and-forth got a lot more intense with this new game.
This seems to come from a sponsorship allegedly gone wrong. Saw Quotes tweeted on May 4 about their excitement for their sponsorship with Lionsgate, while also wondering if their check was cleared. Two days later, the checks were apparently still processing, as the account ended up hacking the official account with a threatening message. After receiving no response, the post was made, complete with a steamy piece of fanart by artist Jason Ebeyer.
This was the wake-up call that the Saw social media manager needed to take action. After the official account issued an apology and “threatened” legal action, Saw Quotes struck again with what seems like a legitimate Lionsgate computer. However, what made it worse was that an “official” file containing the film Spiral was on the computer and made vulnerable to deletion. This is where the games began.
Saw Quotes made the official account’s followers answer three questions about the series. While some users gave correct answers, others mocked the poor manager’s plight and gave purposefully incorrect answers, causing the official account to ultimately fail the test. The parody account gave another task: reward a fan with a special piece of promotional material. When all that the Saw account could find was a 14-year-old box of floss promoting Saw III, Spiral inched closer and closer to the computer’s recycle bin.
The floss was won by Twitter user @OneCartoon, a comic writer and artist who says he had limited knowledge of the franchise beforehand. “I saw [the contest] while scrolling through Twitter,” he says. “I was like ‘eh, why not?’ and I put my comment and I just won.” He plans to keep the floss secured, saying “I’m probably gonna keep it in a safe place. I’ll keep it in my room somewhere and put it on a shelf.”
Finally, the ultimate test came. Saw Quotes gave one hour to make Spiral star and producer Chris Rock recite one of their 300 tweets. While some spectators campaigned for a particularly NSFW tweet to be read, director Darren Lynn Bousman eventually took Rock’s place to recite a tweet that mirrors the series’s own socio-economic commentary. Unfortunately, that did not seem to satisfy the hacker, as they went to delete the movie once and for all.
Much like any other Saw film, however, there was a twist. Saw Quotes never wanted to delete the film, but rather post it on Twitter. Unfortunately, they failed to account for Twitter’s video file limit, as the film was unable to be posted online. The final nail in Saw Quotes’ coffin came when Lionsgate’s IT department located the user’s IP address and removed them from their internal network. In a sobering final statement, they admitted defeat.
Although this exchange was planned to promote Spiral, it is still an entertaining marketing campaign nonetheless. Getting fans involved in marketing their films has been a consistent theme throughout Saw’s history, most famously through their former Saw Blood Drive event. Updating this for the digital age, collaborating with a popular parody account to do so, was a smart and engaging way to promote Spiral.
While this might not be the last we hear from the enigmatic Saw Quotes, fans can rest assured that Lionsgate’s files are safe and secure. Spiral: From The Book of Saw opens in theaters on May 14.