New Line is reviving its “Final Destination” franchise, which has been dormant since 2011, and has tapped “Saw” screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to write the sixth installment.
The five films grossed nearly $700 million worldwide between 2000 and 2011. Unlike most horror franchises, the antagonist was Death as an unavoidable fate manifesting itself in a myriad of ways. In the first “Final Destination,” a high school student played by Devon Sawa has a premonition the plane he’s about to board will explode, leading to several passengers being left behind before the plane actually explodes. The survivors are then killed in a series of bizarre accidents, such as Kerr Smith’s character being crushed by a neon sign.
New Line’s most successful recent movies have been in the relatively low-cost horror genre. Those include the adaptation of Stephen King’s “It,” which hit $700 million in worldwide box office, and in the “Conjuring” universe, which has seen five films deliver $1.6 billion cumulatively in worldwide box office since 2013.
Melton and Dunstan won the third season of “Project Greenlight” and wrote the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh “Saw” movies for Lionsgate. The duo is attached to “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” at CBS Films, “The Reckoning” at Paramount, and an untitled Christmas horror project at Sony.
Melton and Dunstan are repped by Verve, Underground, and law firm Bloom Hergott Diemer Rosenthal. The news was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter.