“Doctor, I have this strange dream — that every three years there’s a movie about some guy who has a strange dream about people who die in some awful calamity — and that he acts on the dream by saving his friends, who then begin dying in grotesque ways — and that, each time, it’s really the same movie, just with a different calamity each time — and, this is the weirdest part, large numbers of moviegoers keep paying to see it! What do you think I should do?” “Buy stock in the company that produces the movies.” We wouldn’t absolutely insist on that last part — since Warner Bros., the studio in charge of the Final Destination horror films, is a corporate sibling of your favorite web site — but there’s no question that the series has been a triennial cash cow. The 2000 original earned $113 million worldwide; the 2003 sequel took in $90 million; and the third , in 2006, another $113 million. And since each is made for a thrifty $25 million, there are big profits in the FD franchise.
