After the success of his “Spider-Man” movies for Marvel Studios and Sony, director Jon Watts went to Warner Bros. and proposed a resuscitation of a long-dead property: “Final Destination.” The series, which had started in 2000 by New Line Cinema with a movie about a group of teens that cheated death, inspired a number of sequels. But the franchise had been dormant since 2011. Watts’ proposal was that the new movie go back in time and follow a single family, with death stalking their family tree. He wrote a one pager describing the story, gave it to the studio, and they were in. But who would direct?
That’s where Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein came in, like a gust of air into a knife shop.
(Spoiler warning for “Final Destination Bloodlines,” by the way. You wouldn’t want to ruin any of the bloody fun for yourself.)
Lipovsky said that the process of landing the gig of directing “Final Destination Bloodlines” took over six months, with the filmmakers pitching producers on what their draft of the movie could be. “They really wanted to develop it with filmmakers all the way through the process,” Lipovsky said. “We got really excited about the family aspect of the pitch,” Stein said. Their last movie, “Freaks,” was a horror movie about a family. “We really dug into that in the pitch, giving them lots of details from our own personal lives, about how the characters related to us, or where we thought they could go to become richer.”
They also described how they would handle the famous “Final Destination” set pieces – where a series of things go wrong, ending in a spectacular death scene. “That’s a big thing for New Line, because they make so many great horror movies. They’re always trying to figure out, How are we going to scare people with this?” Stein said. Lipovsky said that they spoke in terms of set pieces from the earlier movies – what had worked, what hadn’t – “so that they could really see that we had a sense of the legacy of everything that had come before.”
But what really sealed the deal was that they murdered themselves. Live on Zoom. Stein said that the idea had occurred to them on a location scout for a movie that ended up not happening. They were driving back from Death Valley when inspiration struck. They would use pre-recorded footage, uploaded as the virtual backgrounds on Zoom, to kill themselves during their final pitch. “We wanted to tell them what we want to do with the movie, then show them what we’re talking about,” Stein said. Stein’s house caught on fire. They both tried to put it out. Zach turned on a ceiling fan but ended up cutting Stein’s head off. “The magic of it was the seamless, live nature of it. A lot of people have been upset that there’s no recording, but it was live on Zoom,” Stein said. “I think that what that showed the most of all was that we knew what tone we were going for.”
They were hired and the duo made “Final Destination Bloodlines” into not only the most successful film of the series (making nearly $125 million in its first week of release) but also the most critically acclaimed (with a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes). What makes the movie’s success even more impressive is that it was originally earmarked as a direct-to-streaming exclusive.
Much of its success has to do with the way the movie mixes the tried-and-true scares the series is known for, with more emotion, which was one of the things they pitched initially. “Our thesis we sold to New Line was that, if you really care about these people, the audience is going to really root for them and it will make the horror set pieces scarier,” Lipovsky said. “In the past, a lot of times, the characters were fairly thin and many characters were stereotypes that were purposefully unlikable so that you could enjoy their death. We proposed that if you really take this family dynamic and create relatable connections between all of them, the audience will be rooting for them and that’ll make them really on the edge of their seat when death comes for them.”
The filmmakers were also keen to add new mythology to the movie, including an unlucky penny that threads through the film, from the beginning disaster sequence (set in a Seattle Space Needle-type restaurant in the 1960s) to the current day bloodshed. “A lot of people who have never seen a ‘Final Destination’ movie assume there’s a penny in all of them,” Lipovsky said. “They say, ‘What’s the backstory of the penny?’” Stein added.
When Stein and Lipovsky first came on board, the opening accident was set in the 1950s, on a paddle-wheel riverboat. Some aspects remained – the original was a date sequence, so the romance was already there, as was the idea of the live band and a fancy restaurant. But the duo realized that when they pitched it, they were never going to beat “Titanic.”
“As soon as you have a sinking boat, you’re doing ‘Titanic,’ except you’re doing it worse than ‘Titanic,’” Stein said. After they were hired, they started brainstorming and Stein brought up his fear of heights. He’d always wanted to communicate this fear in the most visceral way, and thus the idea of a tower was born. “At some point after that, we thought of the urban legend of, if you throw a penny off a tall building, it could kill someone,” Stein said. It was the perfect thing for a “Final Destination” movie. It also connected to another element of the movie, with the urban legend of putting a penny on a track could derail a train. “Those things inspired us to use a penny, and also the good luck, bad luck connotations in ways that were unexpected in the story,” Stein said.
This iterative process carried through the entire production. “For many years, groups of people sitting around dining room tables, brainstorming, iterating, working with the crew, thinking of new ideas constantly,” Lipovsky said. He said that they were inspired by the process that Pixar pioneered.
“We’ve always tried to bring that iterative model into live action,” Lipovsky said. Originally, there was a sequence at a Chuck E. Cheese-style play place, “which seemed like an incredibly fertile area to completely ruin for people,” Lipovsky said. They had mapped out the entire sequence and had even purchased bumper cars, before realizing that setting the post-funeral sequence in a family backyard was more relatable “and much more juicy for how it could work.” Every single death in the movie, every single set piece, was thought about and imagined and designed like that – with a combination of thoughtfulness and nimbleness.
One thing they couldn’t plan for was the emotional resonance associated with a cameo appearance by Tony Todd, the genre legend who had appeared in almost every previous installment. Todd died on Nov. 6, 2024. “Final Destination Bloodlines” is his final screen credit. His big scene is unexpectedly powerful; at the screening we went to, applause broke out after his character exited.
“We always knew we wanted Tony in the movie because he’s such an essential part of the franchise, but it was clear that he was sick for many years and the closer we got to shooting, the more we were uncertain whether he’d even be well enough to participate,” Stein said. Still, the actor kept telling the filmmakers not to write him out of the movie. “But it was clear to everyone that he was physically weakened, even though he was very excited and joyful to participate. We knew it would be clear to the audience that he’s different than he used to be, just visually when you first see him. We needed to make that part of the story of the character.”
Todd was also excited about giving his character a backstory – as a little kid he’s actually in the restaurant in the opening sequence – since his character has instigated many theories from the fan communities over the years – was he an angel? The devil? Death itself? The filmmakers and the actor were keen to give him a human context and provide the character with not just a beginning but an ending too.
Todd’s big scene – the one that elicited applause – was scripted, but the filmmakers pulled the actor aside and said, “What do you want to say to people?” “Those final few lines that he says in that scene were all improvised by him, speaking from the heart about what life means in his own words. And I think that that’s part of why it’s so powerful there,” Stein explained.
Considering this is the sixth movie in the franchise and the best since the original, has also made more money than any other entry in the franchise (it’s nearing the $200 million mark) have Stein and Lipovsky started thinking about new ways that death could return?
“I think another thing that people and critics are responding to is the reinvention of it – starting it in the past, making it about a family for the first time, and all the new depth that that was able to create,” Stein said. “You really have to think about, how do you then reinvent it again in a way that feels as original, so that you’re not repeating yourself. That that would be our main concern.”
But have they started concerning themselves?
“We haven’t started yet, we’re still trying to figure out if there’s something there,” Lipovsky said. Hey, death is never done.
“Final Destination Bloodlines” is in theaters now.
