We’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of Final Destination all week here on Bloody Disgusting, and we’re not the only ones. Consequence of Sound just published a fantastic in-depth oral history of the film that was written by Jason Scott, including interviews with writer/creator Jeffrey Reddick, producer Craig Perry and stars Amanda Detmer and Kerr Smith.
As most of you reading this right now are probably aware, the concept for Final Destination originally started out as a spec script Jeffrey Reddick wrote in the early ’90s for “The X-Files,” titled Flight 180. Ultimately, Reddick never actually sent the script to the “X-Files” team and instead started developing the idea as a feature film for New Line. The rest is history.
Speaking with Consequence of Sound in celebration of Final Destination‘s 20th anniversary, Reddick dives into the ways in which his original draft of the feature film script differed from the final product that we ended up with. Reddick’s script was eventually worked on by James Wong and Glen Morgan, which is when it morphed a bit from his original concept.
“In my original version, since death had messed up the first time, it couldn’t just kill the people. It basically exploited their biggest fears and drove them to suicide,” Reddick explained.
He continued, digging a whole lot deeper…
“In my draft, Alex’s best friend Tod rigged up a noose in his garage. He was a preacher’s son and stole stuff from his dad. He was calling his father on his car phone to say he was sorry. When the dad came home and opened the garage, he hung himself.
“Carter jumps in front of a subway train and kills himself. There are remnants of the deaths in the film. In the script, he was still a jerk, but he felt really guilty after his girlfriend died. You saw this other side of him when he was grieving.
“I had written a sister who stayed on the plane and a sister who got off the plane, which was changed to two brothers [Tod and his brother]. The sister who died in the plane crash was the straight A student. The other was the one always getting into trouble. Her sister started haunting her, and so she started dressing like her sister and acting like her sister. When she couldn’t be her sister, she set herself on fire.
“There was another character who had attempted suicide before the plane crash. She started getting haunted by all the people who had died before her. She ended up killing herself.
“Terri was still dating Carter. But because he was so demanding of her, she was bulimic. She died earlier in my draft, and Carter was haunted by her. She shows up and torments him at a subway station, saying, “Do you know what I did to myself to look beautiful for you?” She starts puking her intestines out, which is an homage to Gates of Hell, an old Italian horror film. That drives Carter to jump in front of the train.
“The finale was Clear going back to the crash site and reliving the plane crash. She was standing on the ground, and the plane literally crashed on top of her. All her dead friends showed up around her. She had a gun, and death was basically tormenting her to kill herself. Then, she realizes she’s pregnant, so death couldn’t get her, because there was an innocent life inside of her.
“The original ending was Clear in the delivery room having the baby. You think it’s all good, but all the lights go out. A dark figure comes into the delivery room, and you realize that now the baby’s been born, she’s a goner. Alex is the only one left.”
“They went to Clive Barker first, and he passed on it,” Reddick adds. Wong and Morgan (two major players in the world of “The X-Files” – talk about serendipity!) came on board in the wake of Barker passing, which is when “death’s sadistic design” was conjured up. Rather than driving the characters to suicide, the unseen force would brutally kill them in creative ways.
Head over to Consequence of Sound to read the full oral history.
