Final Destination (2000)
High school student Alex Browning is heading to Paris on a senior class trip. The class is booked on Volée Airlines Flight 180, a Boeing 747-200B leaving John…
Explore Final Destination
Final Destination started with a news story. Jeffrey Reddick was flying home to Kentucky when he read about a woman whose mother called her on vacation and begged her not to take her flight home because of a bad feeling. The woman switched flights, and the plane she was supposed to be on crashed. Reddick wondered what would happen if she had been meant to die on that flight. He wrote the idea up as a spec script for The X-Files, mostly to land a TV agent.
Reddick worked at New Line Cinema for almost eleven years, starting with an internship in college. He had been writing to founder Robert Shaye since he was fourteen, when he mailed the studio a treatment for a Nightmare on Elm Street prequel. Coworkers at New Line told him the plane idea would work better as a movie. New Line bought his treatment in 1997. His survivors were adults at first. After Scream hit, the studio asked him to make them teenagers.
Producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide of Zide/Perry Productions brought in James Wong and Glen Morgan, the X-Files writing team, to rewrite the script. Wong directed. The big decision was that there would be no Michael Myers type. Death would never show up as a person. The whole world, from a leaky toilet to a loose sign, would do the killing. Reddick kept sole story credit and shared screenplay credit with Wong and Morgan.
Final Destination opened March 17, 2000. It came in third its first weekend with about $10 million and ended with $53.3 million in the U.S. and $112.9 million worldwide on a $23 million budget. Critics were split, but audiences found it, and it won the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. Devon Sawa and Ali Larter led the cast, and Tony Todd played the mortician William Bludworth, who became the series' one real recurring face.
Toby Emmerich, then New Line's president of production, asked Reddick about a sequel. Wong and Morgan were busy, so stunt veteran David R. Ellis directed Final Destination 2 from a script by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber. It opened January 31, 2003. Ali Larter came back as Clear Rivers, Sawa did not, and the Route 23 log truck pileup became the most famous scene in the series. Its opening weekend beat the first film, but its final gross of $90.9 million worldwide is the lowest of the six.
Wong and Morgan returned for Final Destination 3 in 2006, built around a roller coaster crash and photographs that hide clues. It made $118.9 million worldwide by Box Office Mojo's count and became the top earner in the series at the time. Its DVD added Choose Their Fate, an interactive mode New Line paid extra to shoot. Composer Shirley Walker scored all three of the early films and died in November 2006.
By 2008 New Line had been folded into Warner Bros. The fourth film, The Final Destination, was shot in New Orleans in HD 3-D and released by Warner Bros. on August 28, 2009. Ellis and Bress came back. Critics hated it, with a 28 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a C from CinemaScore audiences, but it was the first film in the series to open at number one, and it grossed about $187 million worldwide.
Warner Bros. announced a fifth film at ShoWest in March 2010. Steven Quale, a longtime James Cameron second unit director, made Final Destination 5 in native 3-D from a script by Eric Heisserer. It came out August 12, 2011. The bridge collapse opening and the twist ending, which put the survivors on Flight 180 from the first movie, won critics back. Tony Todd returned as Bludworth. The film made $157.9 million worldwide, most of it overseas.
Then the series went quiet for fourteen years. Todd said in 2011 that two more films could be shot back to back if the fifth did well, but that never happened. New Line hired Saw writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan in January 2019 for what was called a reimagining. In 2020 Perry talked about a story set among first responders. In October 2021 Lori Evans Taylor came on as writer, and in January 2022 the project was set as an HBO Max original with Spider-Man director Jon Watts producing and writing the story, and Guy Busick co-writing.
Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein were picked to direct in September 2022 out of more than 200 candidates, after they faked a deadly accident on a Zoom pitch. Tony Todd signed on in September 2023. Filming was supposed to start in Vancouver in the summer of 2023 but shut down for the SAG-AFTRA strike. In 2024 Warner Bros. moved the film to theaters and IMAX, and it was shot from March 4 to May 13, 2024. Todd, who had been fighting stomach cancer, finished all his scenes and died on November 6, 2024.
Final Destination Bloodlines opened May 16, 2025. It split its story between a 1969 restaurant tower disaster and a family paying for it in 2024, and it made Bludworth part of that 1969 crowd. It opened to $51.6 million, the biggest start in the series even after inflation, and finished with $138.3 million domestic and $317.9 million worldwide. That is more than any other film in the series. It also got the best reviews in the series by a wide margin, 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is dedicated to Tony Todd.
As of September 2026 the series stands at six films that have grossed about $985 million worldwide by Box Office Mojo figures, plus nine published novels, a cancelled tenth novel, a one-shot comic and a five-issue comic series. New Line announced a seventh film on August 8, 2025, with Lori Evans Taylor writing. Belgian director Michiel Blanchart, who made Night Call, was reported as the director in October 2025. At CinemaCon in April 2026, Warner Bros. dated Final Destination 7 for May 12, 2028. Craig Perry, Sheila Hanahan Taylor, Jon Watts, Dianne McGunigle and Toby Emmerich are producing, and Warren Zide is an executive producer.
The studio side is unsettled. Paramount Skydance agreed on February 27, 2026 to buy Warner Bros. Discovery for about $110.9 billion, and Variety noted in April 2026 that release dates could shift if the deal goes through. In July 2026 a California-led group of 12 state attorneys general sued to block it. A trial is set for March 2027, and Paramount agreed not to close before a ruling or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. For now Final Destination is still a New Line and Warner Bros. property.
Lore and rules
The core rule is that Death has a design. Every person has a set time and way to die. When a visionary sees a disaster coming and people escape it, they have cheated Death, and Death comes back to take them in freak chain reaction accidents. There is no masked killer. New Line first wanted Death to show up on screen, including a melting face vision before each death, but that was dropped as too expensive, and the world itself became the villain.
Death kills the survivors in the order they would have died in the disaster. If someone steps in and saves the next person, Death skips that person and moves on, but only for now. Death also leaves clues. In the first film John Denver's Rocky Mountain High plays before several accidents. The writers put it in after one of them heard the song at the Vancouver airport soon after Denver died in a plane crash. In Final Destination 3 the clues are in Wendy's photos.
Final Destination 2 adds two rules. Death goes through the list backwards, because each Route 23 survivor had already escaped an earlier death thanks to the Flight 180 survivors, which created loose ends. The second rule is that only new life can defeat Death. The group thinks that means a baby being born, but it really means dying and being brought back. Kimberly drowns herself and is revived.
The Final Destination twists the visions. Nick's second vision, of a mall fire, leads him to stop that explosion, but two weeks later he suspects Death planned the whole thing, just before a truck kills him and his friends. Final Destination 5 adds a trade. If you kill someone who was not on the list, you get whatever time they had left. The catch is that you do not know how much that is. Nathan takes Roy's life, and Roy had an undiagnosed brain aneurysm.
Bloodlines stretches the rules across generations. When Iris saved the Sky View crowd in 1969, Death started taking the survivors in order along with their descendants. People who married in, like Brenda and Marty, are not on the list, and Erik is skipped because Howard is not his biological father. The film also tightens the new life rule. Stefani is revived after nearly drowning, but she never went into cardiac arrest, so she was never clinically dead and the trick does not work.
The story order is not the release order. Bloodlines opens in 1969, the earliest event. Final Destination 5 is set in 2000 and ends on Flight 180, so it leads straight into the first film. Final Destination 2 is one year after Flight 180, and Final Destination 3 is five years after Route 23. The present-day part of Bloodlines is set in 2024, the latest point in the story.
Bloodlines ties the series together through Bludworth. He was a boy at the Sky View and later worked with Iris to learn Death's rules. His mention of Kimberly Corman settled an old fan argument. A newspaper in Final Destination 3's Choose Their Fate mode had said Kimberly and Burke died in a woodchipper, and Craig Perry confirmed that newspaper is not canon.
Some endings stay open. Final Destination 3 ends as the subway train seems to crash, so Wendy, Kevin and Julie are presumed dead but never shown dying. Kimberly and Burke are the only list survivors in the films who are never shown dying.
The books and comics follow the same rules but sit outside the films. Destination Zero reaches back to 1888 London through Patricia Fuller's great-great-great-grandmother. Death of the Senses brings back Bludworth and Terry Chaney's bus driver. In Looks Could Kill the visionary agrees to help Death. Spring Break hides the number 1188 all through the story as a clue. Sacrifice ends with its hero choosing to die so Death will spare his family.
Many character names honor horror filmmakers. In the first film, Browning is for Tod Browning, Hitchcock for Alfred Hitchcock, Murnau for F.W. Murnau, Lewton for Val Lewton, Schreck for Max Schreck, Chaney for Lon Chaney, Dreyer for Carl Theodor Dreyer and Weine for Robert Wiene. The Final Destination Wiki lists more: Corman in the second film, Christensen, Ulmer, Romero and Wise in the third, O'Bannon, Cunningham, Milligan and Wynorski in the fourth, and Friedkin, Sears, Hooper and Castle in the fifth. In Bloodlines, Charlie's prom date is Jenny Reddick, and her father is the doctor who explains Stefani was never clinically dead.
Timeline
- 1967-06-18: Robert Shaye founds New Line Cinema in New York City. The studio later makes and releases the whole Final Destination series.
- 1983 or 1984: At fourteen, Jeffrey Reddick mails New Line a ten-page Nightmare on Elm Street prequel treatment. It comes back unread, but he writes to Robert Shaye, starting a years-long pen pal relationship that leads to an internship and almost eleven years working at the studio.
- 1994-01-28: Turner Broadcasting System buys New Line Cinema for $500 million.
- 1996-10: Turner merges with Time Warner. New Line stays a separate studio inside Time Warner.
- 1997: New Line buys Reddick's feature treatment. He first wrote the idea as an X-Files spec script called Flight 180.
- 2000-03-17: Final Destination opens in 2,587 theaters and makes $10,015,822 its first weekend, third place behind Erin Brockovich and Mission to Mars.
- 2000-03-17: Weendigo Records releases Shirley Walker's 16-track Final Destination score album.
- 2000-09-26: Final Destination comes out on VHS and DVD from New Line Home Video, with three commentaries, deleted scenes and the Death Clock and Psychic Test games.
- 27th Saturn Awards (honoring 2000 films): Final Destination wins the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film, and Devon Sawa wins Best Performance by a Younger Actor. Ali Larter wins a Young Hollywood Award for Breakthrough Performance.
- Spring 2002: The Route 23 pileup for Final Destination 2 is shot over about two weeks on British Columbia Highway 19 near Campbell River, in the last weeks of production.
- 2003-01-31: Final Destination 2 opens in 2,834 theaters and finishes second, about $200,000 behind The Recruit.
- 2003: The Route 23 highway crash is nominated for Best Action Sequence at the MTV Movie Awards and loses to the Battle of Helm's Deep, another New Line film.
- 2003-07-22: Final Destination 2 comes out on DVD as part of New Line's Infinifilm line.
- 2003-10: Black Flame, a publisher under BL Publishing, is formed. It later publishes the Final Destination novels.
- 2005-03-15: Black Flame publishes the first two original novels, Dead Reckoning by Natasha Rhodes and Destination Zero by David McIntee.
- 2005-03-21: Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ryan Merriman are cast as Wendy and Kevin in Final Destination 3.
- 2005-06-07: Black Flame publishes End of the Line by Rebecca Levene.
- 2005-07: Final Destination 3 wraps three months of filming in Vancouver. The first two weeks were spent on the roller coaster at Playland.
- 2005-09-13: Black Flame publishes Dead Man's Hand by Steven A. Roman.
- 2005-11: After early audiences react badly to the Final Destination 3 ending, a new subway train ending is shot.
- 2005-11-29: Black Flame publishes Looks Could Kill by Nancy A. Collins.
- 2006-01: Black Flame publishes novelizations of the first three films. The Final Destination and Final Destination 3 books are dated January 3, 2006, and Final Destination 2 is dated January 31.
- 2006-02: Final Destination 3 premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
- 2006-02-10: Final Destination 3 opens in 2,880 theaters and finishes second behind The Pink Panther.
- Early 2006: Zenescope Entertainment starts the five-issue comic series Final Destination: Spring Break. Zenescope's June 2006 press release says the first issue came out in February 2006.
- 2006-06: Zenescope and Circuit City announce the exclusive comic Final Destination: Sacrifice, packed with Final Destination 3 DVDs.
- 2006-07-22: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, James Wong and Ryan Merriman promote the Final Destination 3 DVD and its Choose Their Fate mode at San Diego Comic-Con.
- 2006-07-25: Final Destination 3 comes out as a two-disc DVD. The Thrill Ride Edition includes Choose Their Fate.
- 2006-08-01: Black Flame publishes Death of the Senses by Andy McDermott, its last Final Destination novel. It is recalled soon after for a printing error.
- 2006-11-30: Composer Shirley Walker, who scored the first three films, dies in Reno, Nevada, at 61.
- 2007: Zenescope collects Spring Break in a trade paperback that also includes Sacrifice.
- 2007-12: Planned release month for Final Destination: Wipeout by Alex Johnson, which Black Flame cancelled, according to the Final Destination Wiki.
- 2008-02-28: New Line Cinema stops being a stand-alone studio and is folded into Warner Bros.
- 2008-03 to 2008-05: The Final Destination films in New Orleans and at Mobile International Speedway in Alabama, the first entry shot in HD 3-D.
- 2008-04-25: Black Flame shuts down.
- 2009-04: The Final Destination does reshoots at Universal Studios Florida.
- 2009-04-07: Final Destination comes out on Blu-ray.
- 2009: The fourth film, announced as Final Destination: Death Trip 3D, is retitled The Final Destination.
- 2009-08-26: The Final Destination opens in France, two days before the U.S.
- 2009-08-28: The Final Destination opens in 3-D and 2-D, the first 3-D film shown with D-BOX motion seats. It opens at number one, the first in the series to do so, and stays there two weeks.
- 2010-01-05: The Final Destination comes out on DVD and Blu-ray with 3-D glasses, after a delay from December 22, 2009. Some Target copies include a reissue of Spring Break #1.
- 2010-03: Warner Bros. head Alan Horn confirms Final Destination 5 at ShoWest.
- 2010-04: Eric Heisserer is hired to write Final Destination 5.
- 2010-06: New Line names Steven Quale director and announces the title 5nal Destination. The title is dropped a few months later.
- 2010-08: Miles Fisher becomes the first actor cast in Final Destination 5.
- 2010-09-13: Final Destination 5 starts filming in Vancouver. It wraps December 14, 2010.
- Early 2011: Tony Todd tells Dread Central that two more sequels could be shot back to back if Final Destination 5 is a hit.
- 2011-07-19: Miles Fisher releases New Romance, a Saved by the Bell parody video where most of the Final Destination 5 cast dies in freak accidents.
- 2011-08-04: Final Destination 5 premieres at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.
- 2011-08-12: Final Destination 5 opens in 3-D and 2-D and finishes third with about $18 million.
- 2011-08-30: Final Destination 2 comes out on Blu-ray.
- 2011-12: The UK Advertising Standards Authority rules that a Final Destination 5 poster must not run again in that form after 13 complaints.
- 2011-12-27: Final Destination 5 comes out on DVD and Blu-ray. A Blu-ray 3D edition is a Best Buy exclusive.
- 2013-01-07: David R. Ellis, director of Final Destination 2 and The Final Destination, is found dead in a Johannesburg hotel room while preparing to direct Kite.
- 2018-10-19: Annoying Orange posts the episode Final Destina-Pun!, billed as a Final Destination parody.
- 2019-01: The Hollywood Reporter reports New Line has hired Saw writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan for a new Final Destination.
- 2020-03: Craig Perry says the new film might be set among first responders such as EMTs, firefighters and police.
- 2021-10: Lori Evans Taylor is reported as the new writer.
- 2022-01: The sixth film is set as an HBO Max release, with Jon Watts producing and Taylor and Guy Busick writing the script.
- 2022-07: Jeffrey Reddick says the sixth film will not follow the usual formula.
- 2022-09: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein are picked to direct from more than 200 candidates.
- 2023-07: Planned Vancouver filming shuts down in mid-July because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. The same month, Devon Sawa posts that he was never paid for the archive footage of him in Final Destination 5.
- 2023-09: Tony Todd signs on to return as Bludworth.
- 2024-03-04: Final Destination Bloodlines starts filming in Vancouver. It wraps May 13, 2024.
- 2024-03: Warner Bros. announces a 2025 theatrical release for Bloodlines, and most of the cast is revealed.
- 2024-11-06: Tony Todd dies of stomach cancer at home in Marina del Rey, California, at 69. Warner Bros. confirms he finished all his Bloodlines scenes.
- 2024-12: Tim Wynn is hired to score Bloodlines.
- 2025-03-18: Warner Bros. posts the Final Destination 25th Anniversary Deathstream video on YouTube.
- 2025-03-25: The Bloodlines trailer launches in 65 markets with 44 language versions and draws 178.7 million views in 24 hours. Deadline reports that only New Line's It did better for a horror trailer.
- 2025-05-07: Bloodlines opens in Russia and the CIS countries, its earliest release per Box Office Mojo.
- 2025-05-11: On Mother's Day, Warner Bros. runs a prank screening of Bloodlines under the fake title Love at the Sky View.
- 2025-05-16: Final Destination Bloodlines opens in the U.S. in IMAX and standard theaters. Lakeshore Records releases Tim Wynn's 32-track score the same day.
- 2025-05-18: Bloodlines finishes its opening weekend at number one with $51.6 million, the best start in the series.
- 2025-05-19: Part of the ceiling falls at Cinema Ocho in La Plata, Argentina, during a Bloodlines screening, injuring one person.
- 2025-06-09: Warner Bros. Discovery announces plans to split into two companies.
- 2025-06-17: Bloodlines comes out on digital.
- 2025-07-03: Bloodlines is nominated for Best Horror at the Astra Midseason Movie Awards.
- 2025-07-22: Bloodlines comes out on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD.
- 2025-08-01: Bloodlines starts streaming on HBO Max. On August 2, HBO runs all six films back to back and airs Bloodlines at 8 p.m. ET.
- 2025-08-08: The Hollywood Reporter reports a seventh film in development with Lori Evans Taylor writing.
- 2025-10-03: The Hollywood Reporter reports Michiel Blanchart as the choice to direct the seventh film.
- 2025-10-19: Bloodlines is nominated for Best Wide Release at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.
- 2025-11-08: Lipovsky and Stein win Best Direction in a Feature Film from the Directors Guild of Canada for Bloodlines.
- 2025-12: Google names Bloodlines the most searched film in the Philippines for 2025.
- 2026-01-09: Bloodlines is nominated for Best Horror or Thriller Feature at the Astra Film Awards.
- 2026-02: Lipovsky and Stein are announced as directors of an animated Venom movie for Sony.
- 2026-02-27: Paramount Skydance agrees to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of New Line and Final Destination, for about $110.9 billion.
- 2026-03-08: Bloodlines is up for Best Horror Film at the 53rd Saturn Awards.
- 2026-04: Lipovsky and Stein sign a first-look deal with Sony that includes a Metal Gear Solid movie.
- 2026-04-14: At CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Warner Bros. dates Final Destination 7 for May 12, 2028.
- 2026-04-23: Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approve the sale to Paramount Skydance.
- 2026-08-04: A federal judge schedules the antitrust trial over the Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount deal for March 2027.
- 2028-05-12: Scheduled release date for Final Destination 7.
Franchise records
Franchise overview
- Screen span
- 2000–2025 feature films
- Continuity shape
- A shared mythology centered on premonitions, survivors escaping a mass-casualty event, and Death reasserting its design; Bloodlines expands the pattern across generations.
- Signature elements
- Premonition disasters, chain-reaction set pieces, ominous environmental clues, Death's design, Tony Todd's William Bludworth, and practical/visual-effects death rigs.
Television adaptation status
- Status
- No official television adaptation verified in the public sources reviewed
- Details
- No Final Destination television series, commissioned season or aired episode has been confirmed in the public sources reviewed as of September 11, 2026. This does not rule out a future adaptation.
- Record
- The films share Death's design/rules; not a recurring physical killer.
Final Destination: Spring Break
2006–2007 · Comic limited series
- Publisher
- Zenescope Entertainment
- Issues
- 5
- Notes
- New Line-licensed five-issue story about spring-break survivors trying to escape Death's design; later collected as a trade paperback.
- Dates
- March 2006–August 2007
Final Destination: Dead Reckoning
2005 · original novel
- Author
- Natasha Rhodes
- Publisher
- Black Flame
- Publication date
- 2005-03-15
Final Destination: Destination Zero
2005 · original novel
- Author
- David McIntee
- Publisher
- Black Flame
- Publication date
- 2005-03-15
Final Destination: End of the Line
2005 · original novel
- Author
- Rebecca Levene
- Publisher
- Black Flame
- Publication date
- 2005-06-07
Final Destination: Dead Man's Hand
2005 · original novel
- Author
- Steven A. Roman
- Publisher
- Black Flame
- Publication date
- 2005-09-13
Final Destination: Looks Could Kill
2005 · original novel
- Author
- Nancy A. Collins
- Publisher
- Black Flame
- Publication date
- 2005-11-29
Final Destination: Death of the Senses
2006 · original novel
- Author
- Andy McDermott
- Publisher
- Black Flame
- Publication date
- 2006-08-01
Final Destination: Spring Break / Death Never Takes a Vacation
2006 · comic limited series
- Publisher
- Zenescope Entertainment
- Issues
- 5
- Trade paperback year
- 2007
- Writer
- Mike Kalvoda
- Artists
- Lan Medina; Rodel Noora
- Retailer tie in
- Issue #1 was reissued in 2009 with select Target copies of The Final Destination.
Final Destination: Spring Break
2006–2007 · Comic limited series
- Publisher
- Zenescope Entertainment
- Issues
- 5
- Notes
- New Line-licensed five-issue story about spring-break survivors trying to escape Death's design; later collected as a trade paperback.
- Archive
- Comic bibliography
- Trade paperback year
- 2007
- Writer
- Mike Kalvoda
- Artists
- Lan Medina; Rodel Noora
- Retailer tie in
- Issue #1 was reissued in 2009 with select Target copies of The Final Destination.
- Alternate title
- Death Never Takes a Vacation
- Dates
- March 2006–August 2007
Final Destination Bloodlines HBO Max / HBO Franchise Marathon
2025 · streaming and linear television launch event
- Dates
- 2025-08-01 to 2025-08-02
- Features
- Bloodlines HBO Max global streaming debut Aug 1; HBO linear debut Aug 2 at 8 PM ET; Aug 2 HBO marathon of all six Final Destination films leading into Bloodlines
Final Destination: Wipeout
cancelled Black Flame novel
- Author
- Alex Johnson
- Notes
- Planned but unpublished continuation involving plane-crash survivors in Hawaii.
Final Destination 25th Anniversary Deathstream
2025 · 2025-03-18 · official video campaign
- Publisher
- Warner Bros.
- Platform
- YouTube
Final Destination 7
In development; May 12, 2028 theatrical date announced at CinemaCon in April 2026
- Status
- Warner Bros. / New Line sequel in development and dated for May 12, 2028
- Details
- Bloodlines co-writer Lori Evans Taylor is returning to write. Returning producers announced in 2025 include Craig Perry, Sheila Hanahan Taylor, Jon Watts, Dianne McGunigle and Toby Emmerich.
- Schedule note
- The announced May 12, 2028 date remains a future studio calendar date and can change.
- Writer producer source
- https://au.variety.com/2025/film/news/final-destination-7-bloodlines-writer-26312/
Final Destination 7
- Release date
- 2028-05-12
- Status
- Warner Bros. theatrical calendar