Original Script for Final Destination Was Much More Disturbing

For 20 years, the Final Destination franchise has been delivering audiences incredibly gruesome death scenes featuring immensely unconventional fatalities, but creator Jeffrey Reddick recently detailed how his original concept for the story saw the characters who survived a near-death encounter being driven mad and ultimately committing suicide. Were the film to have taken this approach, it would have been far more disturbing and depressing to see the psychological ramifications of surviving the inciting disaster and fundamentally altered the tone of the series. Additionally, it likely would have prevented as many sequels being developed from the first film, which instead sees the survivors of a plane disaster being forced to continue their escape from death.

“I think the smartest and biggest change from my original script James [Wong] and Glen [Morgan] made was they came up with the Rube Goldberg death trap scenario,” Reddick shared with Consequence of Sound. “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.”

The filmmaker went on to point out that the deaths seen in the final film were similar to those that were originally written, though the realized version of the story saw a number of complex scenarios that led to their dooms.

“In my draft, Alex’s best friend Tod rigged up a noose in his garage,” Reddick shared. “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.”

He added, “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.”

The original concept wasn’t entirely grounded in reality and did feature some supernatural elements.

“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].,” Reddick detailed. “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.”

He continued, “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.”

A new entry into the Final Destination franchise is currently being developed.

Would you have liked to have seen Reddick’s original idea? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!