Why did you choose Aquaman?

I felt the Flash had been done before. It had been on TV twice at that point. The one that had not been done was Aquaman. I realized, wow, his character resides in this crazy, big world, and I could do something very interesting with it. I look up to people like Spielberg, Cameron, Lucas, John Carpenter. I’m a fan of genre filmmaking, naturally. So I thought I could make “Aquaman” a genre film, meaning a horror monster movie. DC basically said, yes, you can make Aquaman versus sea monsters if that’s what you want.

How were you selected to direct “Furious 7”? Was that an important step in being considered for other big-budget projects like “Aquaman”?

Believe me, “Furious 7” was difficult to make, if not the toughest of my career. But that movie really allowed people to look at me as a more complete filmmaker.

“The Conjuring” hadn’t come out yet, but Chris Morgan, the producer-writer of the “Fast & Furious” franchise at the time, had seen “The Conjuring” and he loved it. Around that point, Justin Lin was finishing “Fast & Furious 6,” and I think he just needed a break. He wasn’t going to come back to do “7.” So they were kind of scrambling. I talked about what I wanted to bring from my horror filmmaking into the “Fast & Furious” world. By that, I meant I wanted to create suspenseful, tension-filled set pieces. And they were excited with what I had to say.

You broke through professionally with the original “Saw” movie, which seems like every filmmaker’s dream. But what happened next?

“Saw” exploded in a big way and created this big, big franchise. But then I couldn’t seem to get out from under its shadow. I only directed the first one, but my name became synonymous with “Saw” and therefore all the negative connotations — I became the father of torture porn. I went off and did “Dead Silence” and “Death Sentence,” two movies that worked hard to break away from the image of “Saw” and ultimately did not work, from a commercial standpoint. That was two strikes against my name and I’m thinking, am I in director’s jail? All the projects that were coming my way were just copycat projects that weren’t special for me. And so, I just held out. Then my buddy Leigh Whannell and I just thought, screw all this. Let’s go back to our low-budget filmmaking roots. That was when we made “Insidious.”