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New Line’s Final Destination franchise seemed to be pretty revitalized by its 14-year power nap: May’s Final Destination: Bloodlines, which woke Death and its various Rube Goldberg murder machinations up after a decade-plus break, turned out to be the most successful installment of the series to date, making $285 million off of a measly $50 million budget. And while it can be difficult to predict what combination of ostensibly safe home consumer goods Death will choose to strike its hapless victims with next, the plans of major movie studios are a lot easier to predict. Because that’s sequel money, baby.
This is according to THR, which reports that New Line’s owners, Warner Bros., have now officially greenlit a Final Destination 7. That includes tapping Lori Evans Taylor, who co-wrote Bloodlines with Scream and Ready Or Not writer Gary Busick, to write the script for the new movie, presumably lining up a whole new batch of cattle for the thresher. There’s no word yet on casting, but that, of course, is part of the appeal of the Destination films: Outside Tony Todd (who passed away shortly after filming his part for Bloodlines) the franchise has such a relentlessly high bodycount that finding return passengers isn’t ever really a problem. You just need a writer capable of crafting enough ludicrous ways for people to get themselves killed in supposedly safe situations—and a few ultimately futile ways for the flies to struggle in their web of destiny—and Taylor has pretty clearly shown a knack for devising those.
Although it’s never been the biggest of the long-running horror franchises, Final Destination has managed to truck along pretty well over the years: It’s currently sitting at a combined total of $983 million at the global box office, meaning one more film should push it—like so many loose timbers being nudged off the back of a poorly secured truck—over the billion-dollar mark.
