Discuss the Trilogy.

CountingDown.com has posted a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of the opening rollercoaster disaster from the upcoming supernatural thriller movie Final Destination 3.
http://www.countingdown.com/movies/3219913...item_id=3813629

Todd Sneaks Into Destination 3
James Wong, co-writer and director of the upcoming supernatural horror sequel Final Destination 3, told SCI FI Wire that he managed to find a unique role in the latest installment for Tony Todd, the veteran character actor who played a sinister morgue attendant in the first two films. But Todd's character won't return in the third installment, in which death comes after the survivors of a horrific roller-coaster accident.
"The ride, the coaster, in the movie, is called 'Devil's Flight,' and there's this huge devil that sits at the entrance to the ride," Wong said in an interview. "At amusement parks they always have that creepy voice that lures you into the rides. And Tony Todd will be the voice of the devil."
In Final Destination 3, a group of high school students, including Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Kevin (Ryan Merriman), are about to ride a monstrous roller coaster when Wendy has a premonition of a horrible accident that will kill them all. They escape, only to find themselves stalked by an unseen force that wants them all dead. No other characters from the first two films appear in this third installment.
Wong said that, unlike the recent spate of horror movies that have been rated PG-13 in order to reach the widest possible audience, Final Destination 3 will be released with an R rating. "This is a definite R," Wong said. "I think the difference between this movie and PG-13 will be very apparent after the first death. But the one thing I want to add to that is that the deaths are terrifying and intense, but there's also a very high degree of entertainment to the movie. It's not a dark and grim movie, even though there are these really scary and graphic deaths. I think that's also maybe the difference between Final Destination 3 and maybe the Saw movies." Final Destination 3 rumbles into theaters on Feb. 10.

James Wong, Glen Morgan and their young stars find that death is waiting-again-in Final Destination 3
By Patrick Lee
Writing and producing partners James Wong and Glen Morgan, who co-created the Final Destination film franchise with Jeffrey Reddick, find themselves back where they started: creating Final Destination 3, the third installment in the hit horror franchise. For this one, Wong directs from a script by both, in partnership with longtime producing colleague Craig Perry.
The original Final Destination struck a chord with audiences in 2000 with its eerie tale of a group of young people who try to cheat death after escaping a fiery plane crash. In FD3, a group of high school students, including Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Kevin (Ryan Merriman), are about to ride a monstrous roller coaster when Wendy has a premonition of a horrible accident that will kill them all. They escape, only to find themselves stalked by an unseen force that wants them all dead. Final Destination 3 adds a new element: a digital camera that Wendy, Kevin and the other students use to figure out death's plan.
This Q&A is taken from interviews conducted last April on the movie's set in Vancouver, Canada, and last week in Los Angeles.
James Wong, you had to go back and shoot an entirely new ending featuring a subway crash?
Wong: Well, we tested the movie. And I really felt the audience was totally with us, totally with us, until the very end. The moment that the movie ended, you actually heard a couple of people go, "Oh." Like that. And you know, that's no good. But I mean, the fact, even before we tested it, as I was cutting the movie with Glen and Craig, we knew that [the ending] wasn't working. It was just too abrupt. ... You didn't know whether they actually escaped death or, you know, what was happening. ... It didn't have a closure. ... So, before we went to the test, we had a meeting with Craig and Glen and myself, and we talked about what we were going to do, and Craig had an idea where he wanted to bring in the two guys, the sheriff and the [character played by A.J. Cook in Final Destination 2], and they'd be driving somewhere, and they'd get stopped. He wanted to bring those guys in. I had an idea-I was actually in bed with my wife, and I said, "Hey! You know what we should do?" And she's going, "Will you please go to sleep?"
But I had an idea about the subway sequence, so Craig pitched his idea, I pitched my idea, and we talked it out, and we thought that the subway sequence would work. And in one incarnation of the subway sequence, the FD2 guys were ... also in the subway, and they were over here while Ryan and Mary were talking. So we somehow had that kind of thing going. And ultimately they, their schedules didn't work. ... After that meeting we tested the movie, and we knew the ending needed to be changed. So the next morning we went and met New Line. That's when everybody said, "Well, what are you going to do now?" And we had the answer, and we said, "Here's what I could do." ... They were ... great. They gave us all the resources that we needed to shoot it, and it wasn't cheap. So they were really behind us.

Glen Morgan, you guys said after the first Final Destination that you wouldn't do the sequel. It was eventually directed by David R. Ellis.
Morgan: When we went to the premiere of the second one, you went, "Someone made a sequel out of something we did." It was an honor. But ... we just don't want to take the audience or New Line's money if we really don't have anything to offer. When you think about a sequel, you're going, "What are we going to do now? A cruise ship? On a train?" ... We couldn't really think of the new thing. But when [executive producer Richard] Brener said "roller coaster," it really sparked off a lot of exciting [ideas]. ...
Wong: I should never say never. I don't remember saying I would never do [another] one, but maybe I did, and I was mistaken. I had a lot of fun doing this one. It was a lot of fun, and I was telling some of the guys that I really realized I wanted to do another one when, I think, I was doing The One, and I was going up the escalator, I think, in Woodland Hills, the theater there, the first time I saw the FD2 poster. And it was sort of like a shot, you know? The camera's craning up, and I'm on an escalator going up, and I see this poster come up in my view, and I walked up to it, and I saw all the names and the credits, and that's when I thought, "Aw, s--t."
Sort of like seeing an ex-girlfriend with another guy?
Wong: Yeah, exactly. Never had that feeling before, though. So I felt a little bit of a pang right there, and I thought, "Hmmm. Maybe I should." So I was really lucky that day they called and asked us to do this one.
What did you think of the second one?
Wong: I liked it. It was good. David did a great job, and he's a great guy.
In this one, what's the idea behind a roller coaster?
Morgan: [It's] really exciting, because that's really locking people in. You know? It's not even like a plane, where you can walk around. ... This, you're just strapped in. ... Along with that, ... the digital-camera stuff ... and what those images meant, we thought we had a new take on it, and we were happy to come back and do this. ...
I don't know if we ever successfully pull it off, but Jim and I like to have themes. And this one, for the Wendy character, is about loss of control. ... You got a roller coaster, psychologists will tell you that's why people hate 'em, why you're afraid of them. Or why you're afraid to fly. Because you have no control. And for me, ... when I'm going up any roller coaster, I just say, "I want out." But I'm not getting out. That's just torture. ... It's unbearable. I'm nervous talking about it. ... If you look at death, that's [the same thing,] you know what I mean? ... I feel that if it wants us, [it's going to get us]. I think that's why the franchise kind of works.

After the first Final Destination, you went to make The One with Jet Li and Willard with Crispin Glover. Both were disappointing at the box office.
Wong: I don't know. You know, I think Willard's a great movie. I think The One is a great movie. I like both. ... I think The One did OK. It wasn't a disaster or anything. Maybe just the timing. [The One came out only five months after Li's hit movie Kiss of the Dragon.] ... Maybe people are like, "Oh, another Jet Li film." Who knows? And when you talk about a movie, it's about the loss of control: when you market it, how you market it.
Are there any returning characters in FD 3?
Wong: In the first one, Devon [Sawa as Alex] ... died. ... [Ali Larter's Clear] died in the second one. And then ... A.J. [Cook as Kimberly] survived. But we wanted to ... sort of do it over again with somebody new.
Are there lessons you've learned from directing the first movie that you're applying in the third?
Wong: You would think so. Everything adds to your experience, and hopefully you do better next time. But you find out as you start the movie, you go, "Wow, I'm doing the same things, making the same mistakes, again." ... Always at the beginning of the day you feel like you can do anything, and the end of the day you're just rushing, ... just [working] on that kind of time-management thing. But yeah, there's a lot of great lessons to be learned. A lot of times, you think about what to shoot. You know, just know that it's not going to work. Cameras don't do that. It's not like an animation film. There's a lot of things like that.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, were you familiar with the Final Destination movies when you signed on?
Winstead: I had seen the first one a few times, and ... I remember auditioning for the second one, but I was a little too young for it at that time. But, yeah, I got into it that time as well and watched the first one again as well. Yeah, I was very excited when I heard they were doing a third one. Second chance to be in it. ...
[I] tried to just start from scratch, you know? I don't want to look at the other films and the other characters who have the same sort of premonition, similar story, and be like, "How did they do it? I want to do it similarly." I don't want to get in that rut. So just try to start from scratch. It helps seeing the other two as far as knowing the sort of feel of the film and how it's going to go and what it's going to be like, but as far as the acting goes, I try not to think about it.

What about you, Ryan Merriman?
Merriman: I play Kevin. It's my girlfriend and my best friend ... and her boyfriend [who] initially crash in the beginning. So we kind of [all] end up getting in this wild ride together. Because of that, and also because of the fact that she has this vision that brings us together, we solve it.
What appealed to you about this film?
Merriman: It's ... the fact that it's not some demon from the dead of the night or some guy with a chainsaw. It's like realistic things that can actually happen. Like, you hear about those weird things, like a truck's driving with telephone poles and one thing gets loose, and it bounces and decapitates somebody. ... When I was reading the script, this happens, this triggers this, you just keep reading. I think that's what the audience is going to do. They're just going to be, like, "What's happening next? How is this happening?" And then when it does happen, like, "Oh, s--t, man!" It's just cool.
You're both pretty young. Did this film make you contemplate your own mortality more than you might have? Do you see death everywhere now?
Winstead: I think while we were filming it, like, for me at least, I thought about death all the time, because I was in that constant emotional state of "My boyfriend's died! My best friend's died!" I thought about that all the time, just imagining in my head that my boyfriend was dead, my best friend was dead, and my family was dead, everyone was dead. So I was in that constant sort of depressed and emotional state while we were filming. And so I'd have to go out afterwards and try to have as much fun as possible.
Merriman: It definitely brings your awareness up a little bit, doing a movie like this. Like, whenever you get on a plane, you know, when you're in a home improvement store, like whatever. You really do, you think, like, "Wow, that's so true." Because if you think about it, those are all situations where, especially in these type of films, they put you in situations where you're not in control, where, like, ... the accidents that happen, they don't happen because you screwed up. It's death finding a way to get to you. So that definitely brought my awareness up. But I wasn't, like, walking on eggshells, I guess you could say.

Ryan, you did research for the role?
Merriman: Well, yeah, ... I wanted to have some smart topics to talk about it as far as freak accidents that have happened. Like, ... growing up, I knew a guy whose dad was driving on the highway behind a pipe truck, and one of the pipes actually broke loose. He hit a thing and it swiveled out, ... the pipe bounced, and it bounced just right, came through the windshield and decapitated him, cut his head off. And you know, that sounds like a total FD3 scene, but it's true. Stuff like that happens all the time. You know, birds flying into planes. Weird things. It's amazing.
In the opening scene, you ride the roller coaster. Was shooting it pretty intense?
Winstead: It was pretty grueling, yeah. We rode it, like, 20 times, conceivably, in a row, and thought that our heads were going to explode by the end of it. ... But we didn't actually get too nauseous, though. We kind of all were expecting nausea and vomiting.
Merriman: Yeah, it wasn't all that bad. The worst part was the upside-down [shots], for sure: Whenever we'd get actually stuck upside down. Because there were two different rigs. There was one where it was an actual, like, nine cars that they built on, like, a hydraulic thing, and they would roll us over.
Winstead: We were harnessed, but they left the harness loose, so we still had to actually hold ourselves in to make it look more [realistic]. So we're all ... trying to pull our entire body weight up with our arms, and then the part like cutting into our knees.
Have you ridden a roller coaster since then?
Merriman: No, I have not.
Winstead: Not yet, not yet.
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw2711.html

FD 3 Gets New Finale
James Wong, director of the upcoming horror sequel Final Destination 3, told SCI FI Wire that they had to shoot a new ending featuring a subway crash after the original one tested poorly-and that they had hoped to bring back characters from Final Destination 2 in the new coda. The elaborate subway crash sequence was shot in November 2005, long after the initial photography wrapped in the summer of 2005.
The new ending was supposed to have featured characters from Final Destination 2, which starred Michael Landes as sheriff's deputy Thomas Burke and A.J. Cook as Kimberly. But filmmakers couldn't make the schedules work, and the idea was scrapped, Wong said.
In its rough cut, Final Destination 3 ended after an action sequence at a patriotic fair. "We tested the movie. And I really felt the audience was totally with us, totally with us, until the very end," Wong said in an interview. "The moment that the movie ended, you actually ... heard a couple of people go, 'Oh.' Like that. And you know, that's no good. But I mean, the fact, even before we tested it, as I was cutting the movie with [co-writer] Glen [Morgan] and [producer] Craig [Perry], we knew that [the ending] wasn't working. It was just too abrupt. ... You didn't know whether they actually escaped death or, you know, what was happening. ... It didn't have a closure. ... So, before we went to the test, we had a meeting with Craig and Glen and myself, and we talked about what we were going to do, and Craig had an idea where he wanted to bring in the two guys, the sheriff and the [character played by Cook], and they'd be driving somewhere, and they'd get stopped. He wanted to bring those guys in."
Wong added: "But I had an idea about the subway sequence, so Craig pitched his idea, I pitched my idea, and we talked it out, and we thought that the subway sequence would work. And in one incarnation of the subway sequence, the FD2 guys were ... also in the subway, and they were over here while [FD3 stars] Ryan [Merriman] and Mary [Elizabeth Winstead] were talking. So we somehow had that kind of thing going. And ultimately, ... their schedules didn't work. ... After that meeting we tested the movie, and we knew the ending needed to be changed. So the next morning we went and met New Line. That's when everybody said, 'Well, what are you going to do now?' And we had the answer, and we said, 'Here's what I could do.' ... They were ... great. They gave us all the resources that we needed to shoot it, and it wasn't cheap. So they were really behind us."
In FD3, a group of high school students, including Wendy (Winstead) and Kevin (Merriman), are about to ride a monstrous roller coaster when Wendy has a premonition of a horrible accident that will kill them all. They escape, only to find themselves stalked by an unseen force that wants them all dead. Final Destination 3 opens Feb. 10.

FD 3 Is A Coaster Ride
The young stars of the upcoming supernatural horror sequel Final Destination 3 told SCI FI Wire that they rode a real roller coaster dozens of times to film the movie's opening disaster scene.
"It was pretty grueling, yeah," Mary Elizabeth Winstead said in an interview. "We rode it, like, 20 times, conceivably, in a row, and thought that our heads were going to explode by the end of it. ... But we didn't actually get too nauseous, though. We kind of all were expecting nausea and vomiting."
Added co-star Ryan Merriman: "Yeah, it wasn't all that bad. The worst part was the upside down [shots], for sure: whenever we'd get actually stuck upside down. Because there were two different rigs. There was one where it was an actual, like, nine cars that they built on, like, a hydraulic thing, and they would roll us over."
In the movie, Winstead plays Wendy, a high-school senior who foresees a horrific accident on a roller coaster. She escapes with a few classmates, including Merriman's Kevin, but soon learns that death continues to stalk them.
In shooting the roller coaster scene, the actors rode a real roller coaster at a Vancouver, Canada, amusement park. They were also filmed sitting in fake roller-coaster cars on hydraulic gimbals, in front of green screens and on a soundstage.
That included hanging upside-down. "We were harnessed, but they left the harness loose, so we still had to actually hold ourselves in to make it look more [realistic]," Winstead said. "So we're all ... trying to pull our entire body weight up with our arms, and then the part like cutting into our knees."
During the filming, Winstead said, "We took bets on it, but nobody threw up."
Added Merriman: "I was actually going to bet on myself, secretly, and then, like, eat, like, five or six raw eggs and then puke on purpose. But I didn't." Final Destination 3 opens Feb. 10.

'Final Destination 3' Rolls Out All-New Cool Ways To Die
Roller coaster, tanning booth are series' latest sites for deranged amusement.
by Larry Carroll
"Final Destination" fans are a bunch of sick, deranged people. They take pleasure in watching dumb teenagers die gruesome, over-the-top deaths. When sequels are announced, they gleefully fill message boards with speculative scenarios that involve asphyxiating, decapitating and/or liquefying another temporarily reprieved high school jock. Now, as the roller-coaster-themed "Final Destination 3" rolls into theaters, they're once again all too happy to buy a ticket and strap themselves in. They're a sick bunch, yes - but it's hard not to love 'em.
"We like to set these scenes in places that lots of people go to, like a tanning booth or a drive-thru," James Wong - who wrote and directed the original film and returned for the third installment - said of the series. "Hopefully when you do visit one of these places, you'll remember the movies and get a kick out of that and get just a little bit creeped out."
And if you do find pleasure in that distinct brand of sadism, there's good news: You have plenty of company.
"The bus hit from the first one, and the whole sequence on the highway [in the second film] was awesome," beamed Ryan Merriman, who joins the series as Kevin, the latest in a long line of aforementioned jocks. "They are such cool ways [to die], because it's not just some dead guy with an ax or some mad person with a gun."
Alexz Johnson, who plays goth-girl Erin in "FD3," also has fond memories of previous installments. "Ooh, in the first one, probably when that kid fell in the bathtub," she said, naming one of her favorite death scenes. "Remember when he slipped in the bathtub and the clothes hanger went around his neck? That was my favorite."

"I think the elevator when she gets squashed, that was crazy," franchise newcomer Gina Holden said of her fondest "FD" death. "We all think about elevators, if you're claustrophobic at all."
"Driving in the car, it's like you have these near-misses every hour," chimed in Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whose avoidance of the roller coaster in "FD3" sets off death's revenge this time around. The most hesitant of the bunch, Winstead reasons that the appeal of the films is the rare opportunity to laugh at the dangers that actually do threaten people regularly. "It's crazy how close on a daily basis you come to [dying] without even thinking about it. But when you watch a movie like this, it makes you realize how often you really do cheat death. It's pretty insane."
Merriman recalled his own personal brush with terror: "I was like 12 years old and I had a BB gun. For some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to shoot it at a barrel right in front of me. I was aiming it down the side and I shot it and it ricocheted off and it came back. My eye was still on the sight; it came back and it hit the metal sight, which is an eighth of an eighth of an inch. I would've been blinded in one eye if that wouldn't have happened. It was freaky and it's always stuck with me my whole life."
Some would argue that an intelligent near-victim would avoid ever putting himself in that situation again. The "Final Destination" series has been known to create similar sensations for viewers, although it would be nearly impossible to avoid all the fire escapes, airbags, barbells, barbed-wire fences and dozens of other daily items employed as murder weapons in the movies. It's enough to make you want to lock yourself in an empty room and cower in the fetal position - then again, that's what Ali Larter did in the second film, and look what happened to her.
"Duct-tape your doors," Winstead laughed uneasily.

"My publicist actually said, 'I'm never going tanning again,' " Merriman said in reference to one of the more memorable deaths in the new movie. "I was watching her during the tanning scene; she was [screaming] ... that's the most disturbing death I think, to watch those girls burning alive."
Most of the time, potential actors receive horror scripts and skip to the end to see if they're important enough to make it out alive. With the "Final Destination" films, however, the opposite is true. "You call home and you go, 'Mom! Guess what? I booked a part, and I get to die in the coolest way!' " Holden giggled. "Only in [these movies] would we actually be excited to be killed."
"You go, 'OK, what page am I on at the end?' " Merriman said of his typical horror-script experience. "But if there's any way to die, they do it the best on 'Final Destination,' that's for sure."
"Death is all around us, and if it wants to get you it'll get you in a way that you least expect," Wong grinned. "When you change one thing in your life, that change can actually cause your demise."
From top to bottom, the cast of "FD3" says it's all too happy to indulge the series' unapologetically sick, deranged desires. The castmembers only hope that actual death will not visit them any time soon.
"I want it to be quick and painless, definitely," Winstead grimaced. "I'm hoping maybe in my sleep."
"But wouldn't you be pissed off if you went to bed and you're dead? I'd be pissed!" Merriman insisted. "Like, if I had stuff to do the next day and I was like, 'Oh, I'm dead.' "
"I'm just hoping that I'll be old," Winstead caved. "And that I'll be prepared for it."
"Maybe saving someone's life," Merriman amended, laughing. "But definitely not fire or water. Maybe like sky diving and the parachute doesn't open. That would be cool."
Suddenly realizing that one of those deranged "Final Destination" fans might be sitting next to her, Winstead recoiled at the thought: "Oh God."

Rewind: You Must Be This Tall To Die A Grisly Death
'Final Destination 3' recalls other movies that make amusement parks seem not so amusing.
by Karl Heitmueller
Mary Elizabeth Winstead in "Final Destination 3" (New Line Cinema)
In "Final Destination 3," yet another group of teenagers cheats death, this time by skipping a doomed ride on a defective roller coaster. Part of the thrill of amusement park rides is the idea (improbable and repressed as it might be) that we could die if the Tilt-a-Whirl goes berserk. And yet for some reason, Hollywood has rarely tapped into that particular vein of our primal fears.
Alfred Hitchcock was the master of turning the banal into the sinister, and in 1951's "Strangers on a Train," he pushed a buncha buttons. Robert Walker plays Bruno Anthony, a ne'er do well who accidentally bumps into tennis pro Guy Haines (Farley Granger) on a train (hence the title).
Seems Bruno's been following Guy's marital woes in the tabloids and has a proposal: If Guy will kill Bruno's evil, emasculating father, he'll return the favor by offing Guy's cheating wife (who refuses to give him a divorce). Guy turns down the offer, but Bruno won't take no for an answer, and soon Guy is a widower free to get on with his life - once he kills old man Anthony, of course. The film touches on issues of infidelity, sexuality, money, the Oedipus complex, fame and the perils of public transportation. But its most visceral jolt is a climactic fight on a carousel. When the police recklessly shoot into the amusement park crowd (!) they miss their target and hit the poor carny running the merry-go-round, who collapses against the control lever, sending the ride spinning wildly out of control. As Bruno and Guy fight below the hooves of wooden horses, innocent kiddies hold onto the poles for their lives, their horrified parents helplessly watching. Anyone who calls the merry-go-round a wimpy ride has never seen "Strangers on a Train."
While it technically doesn't feature deadly rides, 1973's "Westworld" (which, like "Strangers on a Train," is being remade) is about a futuristic theme park gone horribly wrong. Wealthy thrill seekers pay big bucks to visit Delos, the ultimate interactive amusement park.

In one of three different historical worlds, patrons interact with lifelike robots - and we mean interact. They can even go so far as sleeping with them ... or killing them. Of course, as with all films about technology, things go awry and the robots soon start fighting back. A "sex model" robot wench in Medieval Land refuses the advances of a guest, while "Robot Gunslinger" (a perfectly cast Yul Brynner) starts taking his gunfights very seriously, indeed. The movie is snail-paced by today's quick-cut standards, but it's still effective enough to make you slightly wary of animatronic Abe Lincoln at Disney World's Hall of Presidents.
In 1977, people who couldn't get in to see "Star Wars" might've settled for "Rollercoaster," a film that's part disaster movie, part suspense thriller but mostly a footnote of cinematic experimentation.
George Segal plays Harry Calder, a government agent tracking down a terrorist (Timothy Bottoms) who's been planting bombs on roller coasters and blackmailing amusement parks. The movie is a substandard Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse tale with few thrills. In fact, the biggest jolt the audience got was from the film's gimmick of "Sensurround," a pumped-up low-end audio enhancement intended to simulate the experience of being on a rollercoaster by creating a rumbling sensation in the moviegoer's belly. (Perhaps so they'd mistake it for hunger and hit the concession stand again?) Sensurround (developed for the 1974 film, "Earthquake") didn't catch on because, well, it was kind of annoying, and worse, it was so powerful that it also enhanced the experience of the audiences in neighboring theaters. Imagine watching "Annie Hall" and feeling your insides vibrate while Woody Allen gets busy. True, there is a small rollercoaster scene in "Annie Hall," but the odds that any cinema was able to synch it to the neighboring auditorium's Sensurround are pretty slim.
We'd be remiss if we didn't mention the 1978 amusement park messterpiece, the Hanna-Barbera TV movie, "KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park." Kinda like "Westworld" meets "Josie and the Pussycats," this dramatic (translation: unintentionally farcical) debut of the pop-metalists from Queens is forever ensconced in the pantheon of Truly Great Bad Movies.
Abner Devereaux (Anthony Zerbe) is the ride-and-robot creator at the Magic Mountain amusement park in California. But it seems that his semi-animatronic gorillas and Frankenstein monsters aren't quite thrilling enough, so Abner amps up the rides, almost killing some of the thrillseekers.

Naturally, the mad genius is fired (but allowed to retain the use of his underground lab), and his bitterness and hatred of rock and roll and the youth of America cause him to create an army of evil automatons and living zombies to wreak revenge. Luckily, KISS is booked for some shows at Magic Mountain (no doubt listed on the marquee above the puppet show) and utilize their magic talisman-induced powers to save the day. And play three songs. Unfortunately, "Beth" is one of them.
So why the dearth of deadly amusement park movies? Oh, sure, John Candy gets pretty scared by the roller coaster at Wally World in "National Lampoon's Vacation" (1983). But tons of movies use the vertigo of riding a coaster as a metaphor for some internal turmoil the character's experiencing.
In 1979 Playboy TV aired a quickie called "The Death of Ocean View Park" that was instantly forgotten. And the "Jurassic Park" movies are essentially "Westworld" with dinosaurs. (Michael Crichton, of course, wrote both of those films, and directed the latter. Mere coincidence?) "Pirates of the Caribbean" is based on a ride, but that doesn't count. "Catwoman" had a scene where people almost die on a Ferris wheel, but we don't need to ever bring up "Catwoman" again, do we? No. We don't.
Maybe it's all a big conspiracy. Perhaps the Walt Disney empire has a secret deal with all the major studios to keep from making movies about deadly theme park attractions. So, if (and we're just saying if) that's the case, how did "Final Destination 3" get made? Will there be repercussions? If the producers of the movie are suddenly, mysteriously done in, one by one, by killers clad in giant foam cartoon costumes, don't forget - you read it here first!

Stars Welcome New FD3 Finale
Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ryan Merriman, stars of the upcoming supernatural horror sequel Final Destination 3, were glad to reshoot the film's ending, which adds an elaborate subway crash sequence. "We wrapped in July, [and] we went back in November [for the reshoot]," Winstead said in an interview. "We went back to Vancouver," Canada, where the film shot principal photography.
In FD3, Winstead plays Wendy, a high-school senior who has a premonition about a horrific roller-coaster accident and manages to escape with her friends, including Kevin (Merriman). But the kids soon learn that death continues to stalk them.
Writer/director James Wong and co-writer and producer Glen Morgan decided to create a new ending for the film when the original ending, which sort of peters out after a patriotic carnival action sequence, tested poorly. It was a decision the young stars agreed with. "I kind of thought the same thing, too," Merriman said in an interview. "I was like, 'Is this really how it's going to end?' ... The last [thing], like, you guys see [is] the whole bicentennial thing: ... [It's,] like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then it ended, like, right after the crane thing went down. It just ended. And the audience is like, 'What? Whoa. You mean it's over?' So it was cool that we got the extra [time to shoot a new ending]."
Added Winstead: "I've only seen it recently, the new ending, the whole sequence. ... I just loved it so much when we were redoing it. I just knew it was going to be awesome. So I'm still really excited about that. I love watching it." Final Destination 3 opens Feb. 10.

FD 3 Comes Full Circle
Filmmaking partners Glen Morgan and James Wong told SCI FI Wire that they returned to make the supernatural horror sequel Final Destination 3 after seeing the second installment directed by someone else after they co-created the franchise.
"When we went to the premiere of the second one, you went, 'Someone made a sequel out of something we did,'" Morgan, who co-wrote and produced FD 3, said in an interview. "It was an honor. But ... we just don't want to take the audience or New Line's money if we really don't have anything to offer. When you think about a sequel, you're going, 'What are we going to do now? A cruise ship? On a train?' ... We couldn't really think of the new thing. But when [executive producer Richard] Brener said 'roller coaster,' it really sparked off a lot of exciting [ideas]."
Final Destination 3 centers on a high-school senior (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who has a premonition of a horrific roller-coaster accident and manages to escape with several classmates, including one played by Ryan Merriman. The teens learn that death isn't through with them.
Wong, who co-wrote the sequel and directed it, said that he felt funny when he saw Final Destination 2 in a mall theater. "I don't remember saying I would never do [another] one, but maybe I did, and I was mistaken," Wong said in an interview. "I had a lot of fun doing this one. It was a lot of fun, and I was telling some of the guys that I really realized I wanted to do another one when-I think I was doing The One, and I was going up the escalator, I think, in Woodland Hills, the theater there, the first time I saw the FD2 poster. And it was sort of like a shot, you know? The camera's craning up, and I'm on an escalator going up, and I see this poster come up in my view, and I walked up to it, and I saw all the names and the credits, and that's when I though, 'Aw, s--t.'"
Sort of like seeing an ex-girlfriend with another guy? "Yeah, exactly," he said. "Never had that feeling before, though. So I felt a little bit of a pang right there, and I thought, 'Hm. Maybe I should [do FD 3].' So I was really lucky that day they called and asked us to do this one." Final Destination 3 opens Feb. 10.

Death Haunts FD 3 Stars
The young stars of the upcoming supernatural horror film Final Destination 3 told SCI FI Wire that the movie heightened their awareness of their own mortality, at least for a while.
"I think while we were filming it, like for me at least, I thought about death all the time, because I was in that constant emotional state of 'My boyfriend's died! My best friend's died!'" Mary Elizabeth Winstead, 21, said in an interview. "I thought about that all the time, just imagining in my head that my boyfriend was dead, my best friend was dead, and my family was dead, everyone was dead. So I was in that constant sort of depressed and emotional state while we were filming. And so I'd have to go out afterwards and try to have as much fun as possible."
In the third installment in the popular franchise, Winstead plays Wendy, a high-school senior who foresees her death and that of her friends on a massive roller coaster. When she manages to avoid the accident, she and her friend, Kevin (Ryan Merriman), discover that death continues to stalk them.
"It definitely brings your awareness up a little bit, doing a movie like this," Merriman, 22, said. "Like, whenever you get on a plane, you know, when you're in a home improvement store, like whatever. You really do, you think, like, 'Wow, that's so true.' Because if you think about it, those are all situations where, especially in these type of films, they put you in situations where you're not in control, where, like, ... the accidents that happen, they don't happen because you screwed up. It's death finding a way to get to you. So that definitely brought my awareness up. But I wasn't, like, walking on eggshells, I guess you could say."
Merriman said that he went so far as to research freak accidents, such as those that take the lives of several characters in the movie. "Well, yeah," he said. "I wanted to have some smart topics to talk about it as far as freak accidents that have happened. Like, ... growing up, I knew a guy whose dad was driving on the highway behind a pipe truck, and one of the pipes actually broke loose. He hit a thing, and it swiveled out, ... the pipe bounced, and it ... came through the windshield and decapitated him, cut his head off. And you know, that sounds like a total FD3 scene, but it's true. Stuff like that happens all the time. You know, birds flying into planes. Weird things. It's amazing." Final Destination 3 premieres Feb. 10.

Final Destination 3 Review: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/screen/sfw2716.html

Destination Scorer Walker Dies
Composer Shirley Walker, who wrote the scores for all three Final Destination films and for several SF&F films and TV shows, died Nov. 29 of complications following a stroke in Reno, Nev., according to The Hollywood Reporter. She was 61.
Walker had recently completed work on the feature Black Christmas, by the makers of the Final Destination horror series. She won a Daytime Emmy for her work on the animated Batman series.
It is believed Walker was the first woman to receive sole composing credit on a Hollywood studio picture, on Memoirs of an Invisible Woman in 1992.
Before beginning her film career, Walker was a piano soloist with the San Francisco Symphony. Her first credit was as a synthesizer player on Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. She went on to work as a conductor and orchestrator for Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer, working on such features as Scrooged, Batman, Dick Tracy and Edward Scissorhands.
Walker bowed as a composer on the 1982 feature The End of August. She wrote robust themes for action and superhero series, including Batman Beyond, The New Batman Adventures, Spawn and Superman. In 1996, she scored John Carpenter's futuristic action film Escape From L.A.