The case Mulder and Scully never had a chance to investigate.Across the breadth of unmade episodes of The X-Files, there are none more famous than “Flight 180." Written by a then-unknown Jeffrey Reddick, the script saw everyone’s favorite TV duo Mulder and Scully (the always wonderful David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, respectively) investigating the survivors of a plane crash after it emerges that one of them had a premonition of the disaster moments before it happened.
The passenger is none other than Scully’s brother, Charles, but his lucky twist of fate looks set to unravel after the other survivors start getting picked off in mysterious circumstances. It’s classic monster-of-the-week stuff, but Reddick wasn’t convinced, leading him to rewrite it as a feature film without ever approaching the X-Files team about his concept. The expanded script found a home at New Line Cinema, where it ended up in the hands of Glen Morgan and James Wong, two of the most prominent writers on The X-Files during its early seasons. “Flight 180” was retitled Final Destination, and soon after it was one of the most successful teen horror films of its era.
The origin of Final Destination is just as terrifying as the film itself. The year was 1994, and Reddick was working as an intern at New Line while struggling to make a name for himself. One day he read about a woman who had received a frantic phone call from her mother, demanding she change her flight home. She did, a decision that saved her life when her original flight did indeed crash. Inspired by the story, Reddick wrote a spec script for The X-Files (his favorite show at the time) that he hoped would propel him into his dream career.
However, acting on the advice of Craig Perry (an executive at New Line who would later serve as a producer on the entire franchise), Reddick reworked it as a standalone film. Following the completion of the first draft, the established duo of Morgan and Wong were brought on board for rewrites (with Wong also being hired as director), leading to a reduction in Reddick’s input. How much involvement he had with the final product is unclear, but given he was a first-time writer whose script had been rewritten by two industry veterans, it’s not a stretch to say that his role was minimal.
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