Do we like James Wan?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up, but there's one contested on-set claim and not much charity on the record to lift it higher.
Wan was born in Kuching, in Malaysian Borneo, and grew up in Australia before landing in Los Angeles. The thing that shaped his films is the ghost stories he heard as a kid from his grandparents, aunties and uncles. He says they still inform him a fair bit when he makes his scary films.
Career-wise, he is the bloke behind the Saw, Insidious and Conjuring horror franchises, and he has made two billion-dollar films in Furious 7 and Aquaman. Saw even earned him a torture-porn label he reportedly felt was unfair. He runs the production company Atomic Monster, now joined with Blumhouse.
The messiest story is the Aquaman sequel. Notes made public during the Depp–Heard defamation trial, reported by Variety, alleged Wan raised his voice at Amber Heard on set. The judge in that trial ruled the notes inadmissible as hearsay. A DC spokesperson said Wan is known for treating cast and crew with the utmost respect, and the reports carried no statement from Wan himself.
There was also a copyright stoush over Malignant. Screenwriter Adam Cosco sued in 2022, alleging Wan and Atomic Monster copied his script. Wan has denied ever receiving or reading it. A judge granted Atomic Monster's anti-SLAPP motion and found Cosco hadn't shown access to the script, and the case then settled on undisclosed terms.
On the harm check, we found no statements from Wan on trans people, vaccines or climate, and nothing campaigning against anyone. What he has said publicly runs the other way: he has talked about Malignant as a story about women having control taken away from them. His recent work is mostly Blumhouse and Atomic Monster horror, which raised no company-you-keep flags.
On the money side, he reportedly pushed Warner Bros. for a bigger cut of future Conjuring films and was prepared to walk if he didn't get it, per Puck's reporting. That's a business negotiation rather than a moral failing, and the status of that dispute was unresolved in what we read.