FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES Directors Broke the World Record for Oldest Person Set on Fire — GeekTyrant

Geek Tyrant

09-05-2025

When it comes to topping death, Final Destination: Bloodlines isn't playing it safe. As the sixth film in the long-running horror franchise, it doesn't just aim to deliver creatively grisly kills, it sets actual fire to the record books.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein revealed that one of the film's craziest moments involved lighting 71-year-old former stuntwoman Yvette Ferguson on fire. Lipovsky said:
'We lit so many different people on fire, including breaking the world record for oldest person on fire with Yvette Ferguson, who did that full body burn in the silver dress. That was the oldest person ever on fire, on camera.'
Ferguson, who came out of retirement to play the ill-fated Mrs. Fuller, gets torched during the movie's bonkers opening sequence, which is set in a 1960s restaurant atop the fictional 400-foot Skyview Tower.
With glass floors and a panoramic view, the towering deathtrap is a callback to real-world structures like Toronto's CN Tower except this one's about to be consumed by fire, falling debris, and panic. And Mrs. Fuller is center stage in a fiery exit.
Brec Bassinger, who plays Iris in the film was on set for Ferguson's historic burn. She said:
'Oh, I was on set when they lit her on fire! I was within her vicinity. God, it was beautiful. Everyone started clapping…She was so pumped.'
According to the directors, that wild opening disaster scene, which features the franchise's signature domino effect chaos took nearly half the film's production time to shoot.
It involved seven separate sets and an actual 100-foot-diameter replica of the restaurant, built to be both stunning and safe for a massive fire sequence. Lipovsky said:
'We had to build the thing basically out of concrete. It was not only built to look incredibly cool, but it was built to be incredibly robust, as far as having huge amounts of fireproofing. It was so hot that you couldn't be in that set. You had to be standing really far away.'
The scale was so crazy that even the floors had to be tilted and rotated mid-shoot. Bassinger herself was hoisted into the air on wires as the restaurant 'split in half' on screen. 'The risk of literally falling, honestly, helped with acting because at some point, I wasn't even acting,' she admitted.
It's this no-holds-barred, practical-effects-first approach that defines Final Destination: Bloodlines. Lipovsky added:
'One of the special things about Final Destination that I don't think really exists anywhere else is that you get that scale. You get that disaster movie Hollywood feeling, but at an extremely R-rated tone, which is very rare. You get that Roland Emmerich spectacle, but you see the people explode and light on fire and falter in their deaths, and you don't cut away.'
If death is inevitable, at least Final Destination knows how to make it wildly entertaining. Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in theaters on May 16.