Five Final Destination Facts - Female First on Astini News

27 August 2011

The Final Destination franchise has been terrorising horror movie lovers for a decade, and it's back this week for a fifth instalment.

And here are five creepy, but true, Final Destination facts:

1) When the first draft of the screenplay for the first film in the Final Destination franchise was delivered to New Line Cinema, the project executive brought it with him to read on a flight to New York City. 

When he opened the envelope, he saw that the screenwriters had titled the script, 'Flight 180.'  Then he looked at his plane ticket - and realized he was on Flight 180 from Los Angeles to New York. 

Needless to say, he didn't read the script. He put it back in the envelope and prayed the plane would land safely. It did.

2) When Final Destination 5 needed a massive steel gimbal knuckle to support the large section of bridge being built on-stage to augment the practical shooting on a suspension bridge in Vancouver, B.C., the plan was to manufacture it from scratch. 

Then the Special Effects team found someone who was selling the large gimbal he'd had sitting in his warehouse gathering dust for over a decade.

They quickly purchased it and discovered that it was, in fact, the original gimbal knuckle manufactured to support the plane body in the first Final Destination.  It had been missing for years.

3) During production on Final Destination 5, one of the extras was taking some down time to sort through old boxes of paperwork. 

Inside one box, he found a call sheet and set of script sides from the original Final Destination - on which he'd been an extra eleven years earlier.

4) During the shooting of Final Destination 3, the schedule had the entire cast on a real rollercoaster for an important establishing shot. 

As it started up the first incline, the car suddenly stopped halfway up, stranding them for nearly 30 minutes.  They were not as excited to shoot the rest of the sequence after that.

5) The writers of the first film, 1990's Final Destination, named several characters after real life figures in the history of horror films, including Lon Chaney and Tod Browning. 

Since then, character names have paid homage to a 'who's who' in horror, from William Castle to Roger Corman to George A. Romero.

Final Destination 5 is out now