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The first Final Destination movie was originally an X-Files spec script

25 years after it premiered, a resurfaced fact about the first Final Destination film puts the whole franchise in a new light. No, not the tanning bed kind

News by Grant DeArmitt, Staff Writer

Published on Thu Mar 20 2025

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On March 17, 2025, horror fans marked 25 years of a franchise that, to this day, has hardcore fans the world over. Yes, Final Destination is once again at the forefront of pop culture, but not just because of its jubilee anniversary. A brand new entry to the saga, the franchise's 6th, comes out this summer. And with all the buzz surrounding the killer-less killer films, a wild detail regarding its origins has resurfaced.

That is, that the first Final Destination script was originally written as an X-Files story.

The idea for Final Destination came from writer Jeffrey Reddick, who conceived of the notion after reading about a woman who supposedly didn't board a plane destined to crash because of a premonition. The story Reddick came up with was originally titled Flight 180. Reddick pitched the idea to James Wong and Glen Morgan, who were executive producers on The X-Files at the time.

"Exploring [this premise] as an 'X-Files' episode," Wong tells Variety, "you would be concentrating on Mulder and Scully and how they react to [a series of deaths] — and they had to survive."

Eventually, it would be Wong and Morgan that brought the idea to production studio New Line, known by horror fans as "The house that Freddy built." And as creator Reddick tells it, there was a lot of Wes Craven's creative DNA in the original script.

"The original story was very 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'-influenced," says Reddick, "Where Death played with their survivor’s guilt or some secrets that they had to drive them to suicide, which was pretty dark."

So not only was Death supposed to be a tangible character in the original concept, with the ability to chat with Mulder and Scully, but the initial plan was for Death to look (almost comically) stereotypical.

"[Death] had a sickle and a hood," recalls Morgan, "and it had a potbellied sheriff going after him. And Jim and I were like, 'No.'"

So how did what could have been a cult-favorite episode of The X-Files turn into a champion horror franchise? The producers credit conversations between themselves and New Line with making the tweaks thta would help the first film succeed.

"You can’t see Death," Morgan continued, "That’s ridiculous. And you can’t kill Death — that’s even more ridiculous. And we had a meeting with [executive producers] Richard Brener and Brian Witten and they go, 'Look, it goes like this, death is a force. You don’t see it.'"

hus was born the slasher-less slasher, in spirit if not in actual plot structure. Finally, after the release of 1996's Scream, another important change was made to the script: beginning as adults, the death-cheaters the series focused on would become teenagers in a new draft of the script.

A quarter of a century later, the Final Destination franchise has very few markings if the X-Files script that . However, knowledgeable fans will remember that, in the movies, the flight that characters like Alex Browning survived to kick off the whole shebang was called 'Flight 180,' just like its first draft script. In a way, the Final Destination franchise itself never quite escaped that plane, no matter how hard it tried to change its fate.

Final Destination Bloodlines comes to theaters across the US May 16.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." We couldn't agree more, which is why we've cobbled together a couple pieces to send a chill up your spine. Join Popverse as we explore:

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.

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Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. As Popverse's Staff Writer, he criss-crosses the pop culture landscape bringing you the news and opinions about the big things (and the next big things). In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.