‘Final Destination’ 7 Finds Its Director in Michiel Blanchart

The next installment of Final Destination has found its death dealer.

via: Deadline

In the wake of Final Destination: Bloodlines becoming the highest grossing chapter in the 25 year old franchise with $315M worldwide, New Line is keeping it going, and they’re looking to Belgian filmmaker Michiel Blanchart to take the helm.

The WME repped Blanchart broke out with his short film, You’re Dead Helene, which won top prizes at the Brussels International Film Festival and Gérardmer Film Festival, among others.

That short showed off Blanchart’s penchant for blending horror, comedy and romance reminiscent of early Edgar Wright. He would go on to direct his debut feature, last year’s high octane thriller, Night Call which made history as the first Belgian feature to win ten Magritte Awards (the Belgian Oscars), including Best Film, Best Director, and Best First Feature. Blanchart is currently adapting You’re Dead Helene into an English-language feature at Tri-Star Pictures, after a highly competitive auction, which he will direct with Sam Raimi producing.

Craig Perry, Sheila Hanahan Taylor, Jon Watts, Dianne McGunigle, and Toby Emmerich are returning to produce the next Final Destination with Warren Zide executive producing. The screenplay is by Lori Evans Taylor, who wrote Final Destination: Bloodlines along with Gary Busick.

Final Destination: Bloodlines opened to No. 1 around the globe with $102M achieving the best opening weekend in the six-film series. It was the first Final Destination movie in 14 years. The entire horror franchise has grossed north of $1 billion, making it New Line’s third biggest horror franchise behind the record-breaking $2.73 billion+ The Conjuring Universe and $1.2 billion+ It movies.

Bloodlines was directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein and followed a college student who returns home to find the one person who can break her violent nightmares, and save her family from the horrific fate that inevitably awaits them. We hear that Liopovsky and Stein were offered the directing gig on the seventhquel, but turned it down.