Michiel Blanchart To Direct Next ‘Final Destination’

Following the success of Final Destination: Bloodlines, New Line Cinema’s revival of the popular horror franchise that had been dormant since 2011, new installment is in production. Where Bloodlines was directed by the team of Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, this seventh installment is being handed off to Michiel Blanchart, a Belgian filmmaker who had made his debut feature in 2024 with the thriller Night Call, which juxtaposes the nighttime odyssey of a locksmith during the time of a Black Lives Matter Protest. Night Call was a significant success story for the Belgian film industry, earning 30,000 admissions, which made it one of the most watched Belgian-made films of 2024. In addition, the film swept the Magritte Awards, Belgium’s national film awards and their equivalent to the Oscars, earning 11 nominations and winning all but one, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay for Blanchart. This Final Destination would be Blanchart’s first English language feature film.

Accordingly, Stein and Lipovsky made the decision to not return to direct the sequel. However, one of the screenwriters of Bloodlines, Lori Evans Taylor is set to return, thereby maintaining some continuity with the creative team of Bloodlines. Bloodlines also featured one of the final performances of the late Tony Todd, a long-working character actor across many films, tv series, and video games, and has been a horror icon for his role as the titular character in the 1990s horror classic Candyman and for the Final Destination series, with Todd possessing a role in some capacity in all but one of the six films (missing out from the fourth entry). Todd’s health issues and mortality were integrated with his character of William Bludworth in Final Destination: Bloodlines, with the film’s crew even allowing Todd to improvise certain lines to reflect on his condition. This next entry thus would continue the series without his presence.