New Line is reviving Final Destination, from the guys who brought you Saws 4, 5, 6, and 7
For a horror franchise that doesn’t have a recognizable, marketable villain to plaster on posters—and which got its start as a discarded spec script for The X-Files—the Final Destination franchise has proven implacably difficult to kill over the years. It’s even racked up a few notable future success stories in its five-film run; Mary Elizabeth Winstead starred in the third one back in 2006, just as she was breaking out into mainstream success, and Oscar-winning Arrival writer Eric Heisserer penned the franchise’s most recent installment in 2011.
Now Death—as represented by a series of goofy, Rube Goldberg-inspired murder machines targeting mostly unlikable twentysomethings—is ready to have another day in theaters, with THR reporting that a sixth Final Destination film is now in development. Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, who broke into horror with the Project Greenlight-backed Feast, before taking the reins for four movies on that other mainstay of ludicrous cinematic deathtraps, Saw, are writing the new film, title TBD. (Tragically, they won’t be able to mark the franchise’s revival with the old “drop the numbers and put a ‘The’ in front of it” trick, because they already did that with Final Destination 4.)
New Line has made something like $700 million off of the Final Destination franchise since the first film arrived back in 2000; given that the total budget to date has been a measly $154 million for five theatrical films, it’s not hard to see why they might stick their hand in this particular garbage disposal—hey, the power’s off, right, guys? Guys?—once again.