Here's the trailer for that Chris Rock Saw movie, which is still a real thing

We're not playing games with you: a Chris Rock Saw reboot really is coming to theaters.

Lionsgate on Wednesday dropped the first look at the new Saw film, which stars Rock and is based on a story he pitched. The trailer not only confirms that we didn't dream any of this, but also the title of the movie: Spiral: From the Book of Saw. We can only presume this was tweaked from the original title: Spiral and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One John Kramer.

The footage introduces Rock's character as a detective investigating a series of cop killings, which would appear to be inspired by the events of the previous movies; the plot description teases a "grisly investigation into murders that are eerily reminiscent of the city's gruesome past." In fact, the trailer concludes with Rock chained up and eyeing a saw as a potential way out in a clear callback to the first film. Samuel L. Jackson also stars in Spiral and in the trailer drops exactly the line one would hope for Jackson to say in a Saw movie.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

If you thought Rock's involvement suggested a more comedic take on the material, think again. The trailer's tone is actually fairly serious, if anything more so than the marketing for the previous film. Last year, Rock described himself as "excited by the opportunity to take this to a really intense and twisted new place." This is Lionsgate's second attempt to revive Saw in recent years after 2017's Jigsaw, which set up a new direction of its own but was one of the series' lowest-performing entries.

The game will begin when Spiral: From the Book of Saw, the franchise's first film to be released outside of October, hits theaters this May. Brendan Morrow