a lake to drown herself, but Burke saves her and she is revived by Dr. Kalarjian. Later, Kimberly and Burke have a picnic with the Gibbons and Kimberly's father. The Gibbons explain that their son Brian was nearly hit by a news van on the day of the accident, but Rory saved him. As Kimberly and Burke realize the implications, Brian is suddenly killed in an explosion caused by a malfunctioning barbecue grill. Cast Production Development The first film, Final Destination, was conceived by writers Jeffrey Reddick, James Wong, and Glen Morgan from Flight 180, a spec script intended for use in The X-Files. The film premiered across the United States and Canada on March 17, 2000, grossing $10,015,822 on its opening weekend and an overall gross of $112,880,294 internationally. The film's success inspired New Line Cinema then-President of Production Toby Emmerich to approach Reddick for a sequel, to which he responded positively. Reddick asserted that he "wanted to expand on the mythology and not just tell the same story over again." Unfortunately, Wong and Morgan weren't available for production since they had already signed on their respective projects The One and Willard. Instead, New Line hired second unit director and stunt coordinator David R. Ellis as director and writing partners Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber as co-writers. "Second unit is like an extension of directing, you're doing big action sequences on film and it was just something I was going after. Once I got the offer from New Line and we got a good script, it was kind of a natural transition," Ellis professed. "I wanted our film to be able to stand alone but I watched Final Destination to see what they did that was so successful. I tried to use some of that while trying to keep a stand-alone feel for our movie. I kind of took what worked and tried to improve on it," Ellis added. "We wanted to take what the first film did effectively, and add levels and layers that would come out through the characters. When we first started writing this, we were trying to think, 'How can we make Death just a total badass?' and to be perfectly honest, the first crack we ever took at this script had to be reined in!" Bress uncovered. On the other hand, producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide from Zide/Perry Productions also returned and