'Final Destination' creator Jeffrey Reddick on how the horror franchise should evolve
LOS ANGELES — In 1997, Jeffrey Reddick sold a script treatment with a killer hook about airline passengers who thwart fate by escaping a deadly disaster, only to be methodically targeted by death itself. The studio: New Line Cinema. The movie, the first in a franchise of films, comics and novels steeped in aughts-era dread: "Final Destination."
The efficiency of an omnipresent villain using darkly comedic Rube Goldberg-style devices of everyday doom — rather than a literal Angel of Death, among other ideas left on the cutting room floor — offered inventive scares anyone across the world could relate to. Four sequels followed, with 2009's mistitled fourth entry "The Final Destination" topping the series with a $186 million global box office.
The downside, Reddick jokes on a recent afternoon, of the 2000 horror hit that launched his career, "is that I don't have a toy line. All my other friends have their Chuckys and their Michael Myers masks and their Jason Voorhees and Freddy Kruegers. All I want is one toy!"
There may not be a "Final Destination" collectible playset — yet. (Bus, log truck, roller coaster? Check.) But a dozen years since "Final Destination 5" seemingly closed the loop on the canon, a sixth sequel is in the works, stoking anticipation as well as renewed appreciation for the Y2K original.
Over time, Reddick's own relationship with the film has deepened in unexpected ways, he said ahead of a recent "Final Destination", in partnership with the American Cinematheque. Many fans of the series, for instance, have no idea that the creator of "Final Destination" is a biracial gay man shaped by his upbringing in the Kentucky Appalachians.
