This $657M Cult Horror Franchise Was Supposed to Be... The X-Files Episode 

Summary:

• Final Destination was not originally planned as a feature film – screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick initially wrote the script for The X-Files episode called Flight 180.
• The script didn't make it into the show, but Glen Morgan and James Wong, former producers and writers of The X-Files, noticed it and convinced the studio to make it into a separate movie.
• The original script was inspired by an article Reddick read – a woman missed her flight, which ended up crashing, because her mother said she had a bad feeling about it.

The main reason why the Final Destination franchise was born is quite understandable – the horror fans were simply tired of serial killers with various sharp objects.

Freddy Krueger had been retired for a long time, Jason Voorhees had become so outdated that he was being prepared for a launch into space, and in the same year as the first Final Destination, the third Scream was released, which buried the franchise for many years. And let’s keep in mind the fact that Scream itself was already a postmodern parody of the slasher genre.

Final Destination Wasn't Supposed to Become a Full-Length Movie

Screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick was inspired to write the script for The X-Files episode Flight 180 after reading an article about a woman who was on vacation when her mother called to warn her not to board the plane because she felt very uneasy. The woman rescheduled, and the aircraft she was meant to board crashed.

In the script for the show, the woman who didn't get on the plane was Dana Scully, and the person who shared the bad feeling was her brother. The story revolved around Scully, Mulder, and Dana's relationship with her brother, which made the episode more personal.

The showrunner of the series, Chris Carter, did not pick up the script, but Glen Morgan and James Wong, former producers and writers of the show, did. They rewrote the script and convinced New Line Cinema to greenlight the feature film.

Final Destination Is a Successful Horror Franchise

The first Final Destination was a quick money-maker at the box office – with a budget of approximately $23 million, the film grossed $10 million in its first weekend, $50 million in the US, and more than $100 million worldwide. It also became an instant cult favorite.

As a result, all five films in the franchise have grossed $657 million worldwide which is more than a decent number for a series of horror movies.

One of the key features of the franchise is its exploration of phobias. In Final Destination, everyday things become deadly. In the first part, the writers used the fear of air travel that almost everyone has.

But starting from the second part, the franchise develops phobias to everything in the world – highways, log trucks, roller coasters, acupuncture, bridges, swimming pools, laser vision correction and, of course, the most terrible killer – the tanning beds.