When you go to the theater to see Final Destination Bloodlines this weekend, you expect to be disgusted. You expect to laugh and scream at outrageous deaths. But what you aren’t expecting is to get moved to tears, and that just might happen thanks to an incredible scene from the late, great Tony Todd.
Todd has been a part of the Final Destination franchise since the beginning. He plays William Bludworth, a mortician who, for some reason, knows more about Death’s plan than everyone else. In Final Destination Bloodlines, you’ll learn more about that, but you’ll also see Todd—who passed away in November of last year—put the character to bed in a very fitting way.
“We knew from while we were developing that he was sick,” one of the film’s directors, Zach Lipovsky, told io9 in Los Angeles last week. “So it was developed with that in mind, with him. At first, we were worried that he wouldn’t want to be in it or that he wouldn’t be able to be in it. But he was so excited to be in the movie.”
“And he’s like, ‘Don’t write me out of this movie. I have to do this!’” the film’s other director, Adam Stein, added.
“We were very grateful that we could write the movie with that in mind,” Lipovsky continued. “Knowing that, at the very least, this would probably be his last Final Destination movie. Maybe his last movie ever, but we didn’t know that for sure. But this would be saying goodbye to Bludworth and that was designed from the beginning and worked very closely with him.”
But it went beyond that. “When we shot that scene that day, he was full of so much joy,” Lipovsky said. “It was just this electric feeling of seeing him do what he does so well. And then, when it came to doing that last moment where he says goodbye, even with all the preparation we had done, we just said, ‘Tony, just throw it all away and speak from the heart about what this has all been about and what’s on your mind.’ And his own mortality was on his mind. And he just spoke about how precious life is and how to take advantage of it. That’s what he had shown us all day on set. He had done that. And it really comes through on screen when he he’s just he says that.”
“He’s speaking directly to the audience there,” Stein said. “And I think it takes a lot of people by surprise how much emotion they feel in that moment.”
Final Destination Bloodlines opens Friday. We’ll have more from Lipovsky and Stein later this week.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Read the full article here
