Whether it’s taking a flight, getting a tan or driving behind a log truck, Final Destination has had a chokehold on horror fans for 25 years.

Craig Perry, who’s been a producer on the franchise since it launched in 2000, recently told Deadline about the long journey to making Final Destination: Bloodlines, now in theaters, explaining that he “can’t walk in a room without” fearing death after a quarter of a century making the horror films.

“Yeah, that happens to me every day. … I’m trained,” said Perry. “It’s terrible. Look, that’s one of the fun things about working on these movies, is to sort of start cataloging those things that, like you experienced there, that might wind up in a movie someday because everybody’s had that moment.”

Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, Bloodlines begins with a mass-casualty event, as with the rest of the franchise, this time at the 1968 opening of the Skyview, a restaurant atop a Space Needle-esque tower.

Although we see the horror unfold through the perspective of young Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger), it’s her estranged granddaughter Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) who dreams of the incident in the opening scene, sending her to reconnect with her grandmother and warn their family about what Death has in store for them after killing off the hundreds of Skyview survivors and their kin over the decades.

Following the release of Final Destination 5 in 2011, Perry explained that the COVID pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strike were partially to blame for the long-awaited release of the sixth installment, but the franchise ultimately “benefited from the time.”

“We really learned how these movies work because we had to sort of go back and investigate, but over time, social media rose up,” said Perry. “#FinalDestination became a hashtag, because everyone’s got a phone in their pocket and they can actually film their close calls or comment on, like, being behind a log truck. So, we never left being part of the popular conversation.”

And while Bloodlines marks the “very bittersweet” final onscreen appearance of late franchise star Tony Todd as William Bludworth, it signals a potential new era for the Final Destination movies.

“Never say never. This is sequel land,” said Perry, adding: “I think [Bloodlines] has liberated us creatively to be able to go to a lot of different places in time and to make connections that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.”

Read on for Deadline’s interview with Final Destination: Bloodlines producer Craig Perry about the long-awaited sixth installment and what’s next in the franchise.

Well, let’s be very clear about it. There was a thing, it was COVID, there was an actors strike. There were some things that kind of pushed the timeline longer than we ever really wanted to. We first started to develop it about five years after the release of the [last] one. We did a version of the draft that didn’t quite work out. There was a regime change. Then Jon Watts [co-writer with Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor], who’s a huge lifelong Final Destination fan, came and said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” We’re like, “That would work.” And so, that initiated another script, and that’s a two-year process. As you can imagine as a fan, these are really hard to pull off. There’s a lot of technical challenges. There’s a lot of bits and pieces, you have to figure out how they fit together. So the iteration process is pretty intense for these movies. So, it just wound up being now. But I think we benefited from the time, not just we really learned how these movies work because we had to sort of go back and investigate, but over time, social media rose up. Final Destination became a hashtag, because everyone’s got a phone in their pocket and they can actually film their close calls or comment on, like being behind a log truck. So, we never left being part of the popular conversation because we became something of a hashtag. And that’s when we realized that we may be onto something even bigger because, much like yourself and obviously me, generations have grown up and now a younger generation has adopted the idea of it. And so, we’re looking at this Final Destination as their Final Destination. You can see this movie as a newbie and totally experience the pleasures of a Final Destination movie. And all the Easter eggs, they’ll just go by and you won’t notice it. But if they go back and watch all the other movies and come back in, it’s an even richer experience. They don’t need to have watched the others, that was a very conscious decision on our part, because we realized that 14-year time difference, it’s a long time. And we wanted to honor the new audience that we were trying to reach by giving them their Final Destination, and that became Final Destination: Bloodlines. 

Very bittersweet. We all knew that he was obviously quite ill, and it was pretty clear that this was going to be the last role he would play in a movie, and the fact that it was one of the Final Destination movies made it that more poignant. Zach and Adam, our directors, they made a very shrewd decision to take the last couple of lines that were scripted and said, “Tony, just, just say what you would want to say to the fans. What would you like to impart to them in this moment?” So, everything that makes that scene so emotional is authentic because that was just Tony talking through the camera to the very fans who supported him for so many years. So, it was a very magical moment on set. It was an impactful moment, and it’s one I’ll take with me until I go to the grave. 

Well, never say never. This is sequel land, right? But I think if anything, we would have to come up with the right way to do it that would honor her character, be intriguing to her as an actress, and that services the story in a way that doesn’t feel like we’re just doing pandering to the fans, and that’s a pretty tricky alchemy—I’m not gonna lie. So, I don’t know. The door is clearly open, but it has to be the right thing for us to actually explore it further. 

I know you did! I know where you’re going. 

That is not canon. Do you know why that exists? Because originally, on that train, AJ Cook and Michael Landes were going to be on the train. The ending of FD5 was originally gonna be the ending of FD3 where they all died on that train, and they were all there. The actors were willing to do it, but scheduling, since it was reshoots, we couldn’t figure out how to make it work cause we had to do the reshoots in order to hit our date. So it just didn’t happen. And then it wound up as an idea showing up at [the end of] FD5. But we needed to kind of put an end to those characters, so we just used the DVD extras and had that thing float down, and that’s what it is. So, we don’t treat it as canon, because it was more of a scrambling afterthought to sort of close off that narrative as best we could given the resources we had. 

From our estimation, The Skyview incident beget a long list of people who are marked for death because she saved a whole bunch of people. Now, when you see echoes of the other movies’ incidents in old Iris’ book, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are directly connected, but they are emblematic of what happens when somebody has a premonition. Remember, she’s putting together all her research into one, so from our perspective, it’s connected only in that it sort of shines a light on a larger universe, where these things are happening all over and death is sort of scrambling to make sure these tiny pockets of missteps are being sewn up. The biggest of, was the Skyview, which initiated hundreds of people who need it and then there are families that need to just be taken out, and you can’t necessarily go hit a button and kill off 300 people. People are gonna start noticing something’s up, right? So, that’s why it took so long, and that’s why I think that the web of death’s plan is so compelling and interesting, cause you never know where those tendrils will take you, which is one of the creative roots of the franchise. 

It’s both. It was both fun, we wanted to show that there’s all kinds of things happening at any given moment that you might wonder whether Death has his hand in orchestrating. But because we’ve explored the idea of a prequel with one of the other movies—and I’ll let the fans find out which one that is if they haven’t seen it—that’s one of the things that Jon Watts, by bringing in the idea of starting in the ’60s and jumping forward 50 years, I think has liberated us creatively to be able to go to a lot of different places in time and to make connections that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. And I think that expansion, that sort of satellite view of the plan, I think is going to hopefully allow us an opportunity in the future to have even more interesting and creative deaths for the fans to enjoy. 

You never know. Exactly! That’s why this franchise is weirdly evergreen, because we don’t have necessarily continuing characters, so you can jump around. And the whole point of it is that it’s relatable, they’re in environments and situations that you might find yourself in. So, it’s not so exclusive. It’s sort of very common, and the injection of malevolence into a common environment means that you walk home and your kitchen becomes the most dangerous place on earth, and that’s the magic of the franchise. It has relatability and it travels after you. 

[laughs] Hell no, no! I’m not gonna do it. Yeah, that happens to me every day. I can’t walk in a room without doing this. [looks around] I’m trained. 

Look at me! I’m like the Crypt-Keeper, but fatter. It’s terrible. Look, that’s one of the fun things about working on these movies, is to sort of start cataloging those things that, like you experienced there, that might wind up in a movie someday because everybody’s had that moment. Yeah, we all know not to walk under ladders, but when you see a big crane, you do the geometry in your head, like that could hit me. 

So, congratulations, you had a Final Destination moment. 

Easily the Skyview. I give huge credit to Zach and Adam because the first day on set had like 140 extras, stunts, fire, a 270-degree volume wall built around a 100-foot diameter set, it was crazy that that’s day one for them on what is already a very technically challenging movie. So, I think there were nine different individual set pieces to comprise that sequence itself. There was so much logistics that had to go into capturing that and making it work. All of the opening set pieces are generally these crazy mountains we have to climb, but this one in particular because of the amount of time and resources we had, was a very, very challenging thing. And I’m grateful to say that we got an A-list crew together up in Vancouver and that they all brought their A game to the process, and that’s why I think we have a very successful opening sequence, perhaps one of the best in the entire franchise. 

PERRY: You know, it’s good to be the king. 

DEADLINE: I loved the log truck Easter egg, and I saw like a few other ones in there as well. Were there any big ones that I might have missed?

PERRY: There are dozens that you have missed. In fact, the props department and the art department were so excited at lacing through things. There’s a whole list that we have of ones that are there. And then at the end, when we wrapped, the prop department came up and said, “There are seven others we haven’t told you about. Good luck finding them.” So even for me, I get the pleasure of watching the movie and trying to find more Easter eggs that even I weren’t made aware of that are slipped in there.