New Line has no intention of trying to stop death. In fact, it’s inviting even more.
The Warner Bros. division is moving forward with a follow-up to its horror hit Final Destination: Bloodlines, hiring that movie’s co-writer, Lori Evans Taylor, to pen the next installment.
The hiring comes after Bloodlines, released in May, grossed over $286 million at the worldwide box office, $138.1 million of that domestically. That movie was the sixth installment of the horror franchise and the first one since 2011.
It was by far the most successful outing of the movie series, with its domestic total more than double the next movie down, 2009’s The Final Destination.
Taylor was a key player on the script, which was co-written with Guy Busick (Ready or Not) from a story by Taylor, Busick, and Jon Watts, the Spider-Man: Homecoming director who was creatively involved with Bloodlines.
Destination franchise producer and steward Craig Perry and franchise veteran Sheila Hanahan Taylor are back producing, as are Watts and his wife, Dianne McGunigle, along with Toby Emmerich. (Fun fact: Watts and McGunigle’s very first date was going to see a Final Destination movie.)
Warren Zide will exec produce.
Destination was a surprise hit franchise for New Line in the early 2000s, with a concept that proved easy to transfer from movie to movie, locale to locale, victim to unwitting victim. Each movie centered on a character who has a premonition of a horrific and deadly event. They cheat his or her own death and save several other lives in the process, only to have Death, personified as an unstoppable force of nature, come for the survivors one by one.
The movie series has earned over $983 million worldwide, making it New Line’s third-biggest horror franchise behind the record-breaking $2.3 billion-grossing The Conjuring Universe and $1.2 billion-generating It films.
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One of few women killing it in the horror field, Taylor penned the adaptation of Carla Norton’s serial killer novel The Edge of Normal, which wrapped in spring 2025 with Chloë Grace Moretz starring and Carlota Pereda directing.
Her previous credits include the psychological thriller Cellar Door and her directorial debut Bed Rest, a supernatural thriller starring Melissa Barrera. Taylor also adapted I Am Still Alive for Universal with Ben Affleck attached to star and produce.
She is repped by WME, Kaplan/Perrone and McKuin, Frankel.