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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Final Destination Bloodlines' breaks fiery world record for oldest stuntperson set ablaze
Final Destination Bloodlines directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein aren't popping the champagne just yet, but the Vancouver-based filmmaking duo is certain they've set a new world record. At the start of the latest entry in the ongoing horror franchise, veteran stuntwoman Yvette Ferguson is set ablaze during the film's fiery opening scene. In a video call from Los Angeles, B.C.-born Lipovsky says the stunt team is talking to the Guinness Book of World Records to try and get the feat recognized as breaking the world record for oldest person on fire. 'The whole stunt community in Vancouver came out to see this. We did it twice. It was a full-body burn and Yvette was 71 when we did it. When we cast her, she was so excited … They've been checking with Guinness to get it verified,' he says while sitting alongside his co-director. It turns out Ferguson came from a family of stunt people and being set on fire, but it was something she hadn't done in her career. 'She said, 'Everyone in my family has been burned, but I've never been burned,'' Lipovsky says laughing. 'It's a long process, but they're in contact with them,' Stein adds. Now playing in theatres, Final Destination Bloodlines arrives 14 years after the last entry in the horror series that has terrified moviegoers since the first movie was released in 2000. The new film follows Stefani (played by Langley, B.C.'s Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a college student who inherits her grandmother Iris' eerie knack for predicting when bad things are about to happen. It turns out grandma (who is played in the movie's 1969-set opening scene by Stargirl's Brec Bassinger) is able to forecast with Rube Goldberg-like precision the many ways death can — and will — come knocking. 'Death is coming for our family,' Iris warns her granddaughter. Franchise stalwart William Bludworth (played by the late horror movie icon Tony Todd, who died last November) warns Stefani that death won't stop until all the members of her family are six-feet under. Despite being away from the big screen for over a decade, Stein thinks audiences have never tired of the Final Destination series because they effortlessly show how things we take for granted in our everyday lives can quickly lead to bloody mayhem. 'It brings your anxieties to life. It says, 'What if your anxieties, those things that nag at you, were actually real and deadly?' I think that's why it has stuck with so many people over the years,' Stein says. As filmmakers, he and Lipovsky — who met in 2007 on the set of the Fox reality show On the Lot and together also directed the 2018 sci-fi thriller Freaks and Disney's 2019 action comedy Kim Possible — say that the Final Destination movies are unique among other horror films. 'They don't have a visible antagonist,' Stein says. 'There's no guy in a mask with a knife that goes around killing people or a monster in the woods. The deaths that are onscreen are created by the filmmaking … It's really the filmmaking that's coming for the characters, and as directors that was such a delightful opportunity.' Lipovsky says the pair are aiming to leave viewers traumatized by the time the last member of Stefani's family meets their demise. 'When things that happen in real life that aren't even part of Final Destination have weird circumstances around them, people say, 'That's a Final Destination situation.' That's a testament to the sticking power of these movies,' he says. So a family barbecue turns into a bloodbath and an attempt by one family member to cheat death at a hospital ends up as a sequence that will disturb anyone with an MRI appointment coming up. They even find ways to turn a head-clearing jog on a residential street into a deadly situation. 'When we were brainstorming ideas, we kept thinking about things we could ruin for people,' Lipovsky says. 'After you see this movie, every time you see a lawn mower or cup full of ice … even a penny; you'll never look at those things the same way again.' Because the beginning scenes for Final Destination movies are always memorable (Stein cites Final Destination 2's gory log truck sequence as a classic), the twosome wanted to craft something that would leave a lasting impression. Set atop the fictional Skyview Tower, Iris gets her first hunch that something is awry. She can see a chain reaction that's about to happen when the glass starts to crack under the weight of all the guests and the structure is about to go up in flames. Lipovsky says the idea for the horrific episode came from a visit he made to Toronto's CN Tower. 'I took a friend of mine who had lived in Toronto their whole life and had never been up the CN Tower because he was afraid of heights. I used him as inspiration for all the different things that (could go wrong),' he says. 'It took awhile to figure out all the details,' Stein adds. 'Basically, we wanted to tap into a visceral fear of heights. It was really cool to be able to bring that to the screen and make people feel like they were falling off this building, 400 feet in the air.' Final Destination Bloodlines is now playing in theatres. mdaniell@ Osgood Perkins and Theo James toy with death in 'The Monkey' 'Barbarian' director Zach Cregger on crafting the year's scariest (and wackiest) horror movie
Forbes
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
How A Fake Decapitation Landed Directors ‘Final Destination Bloodlines'
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - MAY 12: Directors Adam B. Stein (L) and Zach Lipovsky seen at New Line ... More Cinema's "Final Destination: Bloodlines" World Premiere at TCL Chinese Theatre on May 12, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Warner Bros. via Getty Images) When it came to getting the chance to direct Final Destination Bloodlines, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein knew that it was a job to die for — or at least give the impression they were willing to die for it. Lipovsky and Stein — a directing team who met on Steven Spielberg's FOX TV reality competition On the Lot in 2007 and went on to co-direct their first feature, Freaks, in 2018 — were among the 200 filmmakers in contention to direct what was then known as Final Destination 6 in 2022. Looking to set themselves apart from their competitors for the coveted filmmaking gig, Lipovsky and Stein decided to take a Final Destination-like approach to getting the attention of executives at Warner Bros. subsidiary New Line Cinema. In a recent Zoom conversation to discuss what is now known as Final Destination Bloodlines, the directors recalled how they pulled off the movie magic that landed them the job. Stein said the trickery began while he and Lipovsky were showing studio representatives images during a Zoom presentation. 'We were in a small square off to the side and while screen sharing the images, we switched to a virtual background, which allows you to put a video in the background of your shot,' Stein recalled. 'Zach is a VFX whiz, so he was able to create a virtual background that came to life and we stepped out of the Zoom and to allow our virtual selves to come into the background in a way that felt seamless.' What followed was a fake fire they was extinguished and a ceiling fan was put on to clear the smoke. If that wasn't surprising enough to the studio reps, the fan went haywire and one of its blades caused Stein's shocking faux death. 'I got my head cut off and fell out of the frame and Zach jumped backward and then switched off the virtual background very quickly so that our live selves could come back into the real background.' However, Stein's decapitation scene lasted long enough to frighten the studio reps. 'The room was on fire and then they realized, 'Oh, they planned this,' and they kind of applauded thinking it was over,' Lipovsky recalled. 'Then they were incredibly surprised when the ceiling fan fell down and chopped Adam's head off and Tarantino-level blood was spurting all over the place.' Essentially, Lipovsky said, he and Stein wanted to create an experience for studio executives on the call that was akin to the feeling of watching a Final Destination movie. 'One of the really tricky things about pitching when you're trying to get a job is pitching what the tone of the movie was going to feel like,' Lipovsky explained. 'You can say it's going to be scary, surprising or funny, but by [creating the fire and the fake death] we were able to give them the experience and having the delight of showing that we understood the tone of Final Destination.' The only downside of the experience was that Lipovsky and Stein's creative Zoom meeting won't ever make it to their highlight reel. 'They didn't record the Zoom and they've been kicking themselves ever since,' Stein said, laughing. Playing in Thursday previews and opening in theaters everywhere on Friday, Final Destination Bloodlines begins with the torment a college student named Stefanie (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) suffers as she keeps having recurring nightmares about woman who turns out to be her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger). The nightmare takes place in 1968 atop a Seattle Space Needle-like tower called the Skyview, which houses a posh restaurant and lounge with a clear glass floor that gives a breathtaking view of the hundreds of feet below them. However, in a series of events that unfolds like the machinations of a Rube Goldberg device, the tower soon explodes into flames and glass windows and floor shatter, sending patrons falling to their grisly deaths. Eventually, Stefanie comes to discover that her nightmare was actually a premonition that Iris had and she was able to warn everybody in the club before all hell broke loose. But as anyone whose seen a Final Destination movie knows, if you escape what is supposed to be your death, death will come looking for you to finish the job. In the case of Final Destination Bloodlines, however, death is not only coming for the people who escaped the Skyview disaster, but all of their blood relatives who came after them, including Stefanie. The Skyview scene in "Final Destination Bloodlines.' True, while the odds of falling from a skyscraper are astronomical in real life, Lipovsky and Stein also made sure to weave some deaths into Final Destination Bloodlines that were completely plausible — like the backyard barbecue mishap in the film's wildly unnerving trailer. 'Everyone has that feeling all day of, 'Oh, this is a little off, but it'll be fine,' like every time you get on a plane to every time you walk across the street to every time you take a subway,' Lipovsky said. 'There are small things in your everyday life where there's this voice that's like, 'Eh? It'll be all right.' So, every time we had that feeling we went, "You know what? What if it wasn't, right? Let's put that in the movie, so you constantly have this awareness.'' As such, Lipovsky said Final Destination Bloodlines — as fantastical as it may seem — will also inspire a feeling of relatability with its audiences. 'What makes this movie work is that there are these very relatable, everyday things that everyone experiences,' Lipovsky said. 'Everyone's tried to light a barbecue that's not quite lighting, you know?' Rated R, Final Destination Bloodlines plays in Thursday previews before opening in theaters everywhere on Friday.
