How the filmmakers handled his passing.
Paul Walker, beloved film star of the Fast & Furious franchise and such films as Pleasantville and Varsity Blues, took his final drive in the latest installment of the Fast and Furious franchise.
With a strong first day opening of $16.9 million overseas, the seventh installment of the series seems to be off to a good start. The LA Times discusses the challenge of making a movie and the added difficulty of losing an actor “midway through production.”
The costars of the film, who were also Walker’s friends and colleagues, have spoken on behalf of the late star with great empathy and tribute. The filmmakers, director James Wan, producer Neal Moritz and Universal Pictures all aimed to treat the matter as delicately as possible. According to The LA Times, the team decided that it would be best to “shut down the Atlanta set for four months to tackle that very issue, convening the screenwriters to figure out both what was possible and in good taste.”
When the film opened this Thursday, audiences attended in droves to see the star in his final onscreen performance. Similar to scenes left for Philip Seymour Hoffman in Hunger Games: Mockingjay, the producers and filmmakers needed to treat the situation with grace.
There were serious challenges for the filmmakers to aid in covering scenes for the character and ending his arc, rather abruptly. The LA Times goes on to say that “the actor still had a large number of days left on Furious when he died (slightly more or less than half, depending on how you calculate them). Thus the conundrum: to cut the scenes he shot and reconfigure the film without him – the old TV trick of having another character say he had gone to Hawaii and never speak of him again – or to find some way, by creative reworking or effects sleight of hand, to keep him in the movie.”
The filmmakers opted for the third option. His image is featured prominently on billboards across America. Audiences across America are saluting his memory, paying homage to the beloved actor, as they go in to see his final appearance in all things Fast & Furious.
