LOS ANGELES — In 1997, Jeffrey Reddick sold a script treatment with a killer hook about airline passengers who thwart fate by escaping a deadly disaster, only to be methodically targeted by death itself. The studio: New Line Cinema. The movie, the first in a franchise of films, comics and novels steeped in aughts-era dread: “Final Destination.”
The efficiency of an omnipresent villain using darkly comedic Rube Goldberg-style devices of everyday doom — rather than a literal Angel of Death, among other ideas left on the cutting room floor — offered inventive scares anyone across the world could relate to. Four sequels followed, with 2009’s mistitled fourth entry “The Final Destination” topping the series with a $186 million global box office.
The downside, Reddick jokes on a recent afternoon, of the 2000 horror hit that launched his career, “is that I don’t have a toy line. All my other friends have their Chuckys and their Michael Myers masks and their Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger s. All I want is one toy!”
There may not be a “Final Destination” collectible playset — yet. (Bus, log truck, roller coaster? Check.) But a dozen years since “ Final Destination 5 “ seemingly closed the loop on the canon, a sixth sequel is in the works, stoking anticipation as well as renewed appreciation for the Y2K original.