The “Final Destination” franchise already has five movies under its title, but did you know that the concept of a group of people escaping death via a premonition and then spending the rest of their lives escaping from Death was originally a concept for a stand-alone “X-Files” episode?
Contrary to popular belief that the original movie was based on the tragic real-life crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, writer Jeffrey Reddick actually already penned the idea of the teleplay back in 1994, which then became the premise of “Final Destination” movies.
In an exclusive with website Bloody Disgusting, Reddick said he found the script for “Flight 180” on an old floppy disc, and was still able to retrieve the Word file.
In the original story, Agent Dana Scully's brother cheated death with a premonition of the plane crash, which led to an investigation involving both Scully and Fox Mulder.
Back then, the relationship between the "X-Files" partners was still of believer-skeptic, and was one that Reddick played up in his script rather than focusing on the crash itself.
“I decided to use the basic concept of people cheating Death as the catalyst. But when you write a spec for a series, you want to follow the framework of the show and go deeper. So, I had Scully’s brother have the premonition, which made the story more personal,” Reddick said.
He did not submit the script to Chris Carter for consideration to be filmed as an “X-Files” episode, instead, he expanded the concept into a feature length film for New Line Executive Mark Kaufman.
“It’s definitely fun to read … but I wrote it over 20 years ago, so I read some of it and cringed a little,” he said, explaining that he got better as a writer as he got older and more experienced.
The entire script for “Flight 180” (PDF) is available to read online. While it didn't make it into the "X-Files," it certainly has come a long way as a successful movie franchise. In fact, "Final Destination 5," the last release in 2011, earned positive reviews from many critics.
