If you have even a remote interest in the entertainment industry and you're not listening to Adam Green and Joe Lynch's podcast The Movie Crypt, I highly recommend that you start doing so. Not only is the show particularly entertaining for horror fans, since the filmmaking hosts are massive genre fans themselves, but the epic guest interviews give some great insight into the workings of the business. Also, guests will occasionally discuss projects that haven't been publicly announced before.
For example, on the latest episode, guest Jeffrey Reddick mentions that he's working on a novelization of his original draft of FINAL DESTINATION.
The FINAL DESTINATION shooting script received a novelization written by Natasha Rhodes and published by Black Flame in 2006, but Reddick's draft had a different approach to the story. The Rube Goldberg-esque death scenes we've come to know the FINAL DESTINATION franchise for were not in his script, those were added by director James Wong and co-writer Glen Morgan.
In Reddick's script (which is based on an idea he conceived for an X-FILES spec script, with Dana Scully's brother being the one to have the Death-thwarting premonition), Death causes the teens to die not by manipulating objects around them to bring about a gory demise, but through mentally tormenting them until they're driven to suicide.
That is a much darker and psychologically twisted version of the story, and I much prefer the way it turned out in the finished film. The fun of those crazy death scenes is part of what makes FINAL DESTINATION my favorite of the multi-installment 21st century horror franchises. Still, I'm very interested in reading how the alternate version plays on the page.
Reddick is currently working on the novelization with Justin Marchert of Dumper Entertainment.
Last year, Reddick wrote a novelization of his 2005 film TAMARA with J.D. Matthews. That book can be purchased here.
FINAL DESTINATION 1 & 2's Ali Larter
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