Development Final Destination, the first film, 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. 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. On the other hand, producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide from Zide/Perry Productions also returned and helped on financing the film, with Perry stating, "We could have made no other movies and the first one still would have been a satisfying experience. But when we were given the opportunity to make a sequel, we jumped at it."
Casting as
Kimberly Corman, James Kirk as Tim Carpenter,
Lynda Boyd as Nora Carpenter,
Michael Landes as Thomas Burke, Jonathan Cherry as Rory Peters,
Terrence C. Carson as Eugene Dix, and
Keegan Connor Tracy as Kat Jennings. Absent from the cast shot are
Ali Larter as
Clear Rivers and
David Paetkau as Evan Lewis. One of the prior film's main characters,
Alex Browning (
Devon Sawa), was killed off-screen in the film. Rumors indicated that Sawa had a contract dispute with New Line concerning the deduction of his salary; "When New Line asked me to come back, I thought it was great. They showed me the script and let me have some input, and it was really terrific", Larter revealed. Cook added that "it's so rare to find one strong female lead in a horror film, not to mention two [Larter]". Ellis and Perry were amazed by her sensitivity and vulnerability in her performance, and she was hired instantly. "[We] were at the beginning of what's going to be a long successful career for her", Perry cited. Ellis pointed out that he "just wanted to find someone who's young and who can relate to these kids. It wasn't an older guy, but still strong enough and yet sensitive. [Landes] brought this really good balance to his part." Landes was cast a day after his audition, which caused flight schedule problems on his departure two days after and cancellation of his appointments.
Filming replaced
Greenwood Lake, New York, in the film for the lake sequence. The scene was shot in two different locations, the other in a private pool in
Campbell River, British Columbia. "We know the area, we know the people up there and let's be honest, there's an enormous economic incentive to shoot there. We were very fortunate to get [unit production manager]
Justis Greene, who's been working as a line producer up there for 30 years and who was able to get us the best crew working in town right now. It was advantageous to us on so many levels, that it was just the right place to go for this movie," Perry stated as the reason for the film's production in
British Columbia. The farm and lake scenes were filmed in
Campbell River and
Okanagan Lake respectively, though it is depicted in
Greenwood Lake, New York. "We shot part of it at the lake where it was 37° cold, which is beyond an ice cream headache. And the second stuff we shot in a big huge tank where we filmed all the underwater sequence, that was in a 93° pool," Landes clarified. Cook and Landes performed their own stunts in both sequences. "I like being a chameleon. It opens you up for so much more in this work. You don't get
typecast", Cook professed.Digital Dimension took charge of the
visual effects of the film. CG supervisor Jason Crosby pointed out that their studio was mainly selected for the highway sequence after the crew realized real logs only bounced about an inch off the road when dropped from a logging truck. "They were concerned about how they would make the shot happen, not knowing if CG would work. The timing was great because we had just finished a test shot of our CG logs bouncing on the freeway. We sent a tape to Vancouver and after seeing it the crew was convinced that any of the log shots could be done with CG," Crosby indicated. "It began with R&D on the log dynamics. Scripts were written to help manage the dynamic simulations with real world numbers for gravity, density, etc. The results were remarkably similar to the original logs shot in Vancouver, a testament to the accuracy of the software and the data we had collected, however the logs still lacked the 'jumping through
windshields killer instinct' we were looking for. By tweaking the parameters, we coaxed the logs into a much livelier role." Senior
technical director James Coulter added creative 3D tracking on shots with fast pans, motion blur, and filters such as dust, mist, slabs of bark, broken chains, and other debris.
Digital artist Edmund Kozin manipulated high-resolution photos which were carefully stitched together to achieve realistic texture amongst the 22 CG logs of the film. Hair shaders were also used for splintering and frayed wood looks for the logs.
Physics such as speed and height of the logging truck, length and width of the logs, type of wood and density of a
Douglas-fir were also considered. Two singles of
the Sounds, "Dance with Me" and "Rock 'n Roll", were promoted on Kimberly's
car stereo. Besides these, the music video of "Seven Days a Week" accompanied the film's DVD. Though it was not officially released, it was made available alongside
Willard: The Original Motion Picture Score on September 30, 2003. The score received positive reviews among commentators. Robert Koehler of
Variety applauded that "Shirley Walker's score displays a thorough understanding of horror jolts." Pete Roberts of
DVDActive admired the score as "top notch". Anthony Horan of
DVD.net Australia told readers to "crank up the volume and prepare for a sonic feast". Nonetheless, Chris Carle of
IGN Movies noted that "while the score is nothing you'll remember, it gets the job done". ==Release==