Coming out of this weekend’s blockbuster Furious 7, most audiences are talking primarily about Paul Walker’s sendoff — a musical number and montage that says good-bye to the character of Brian O’Connor and, by extension, Walker himself.
The studio heard pitches from a number of musicians and ultimately landed on an original song by WizKhalifa (featuring CharliePuth) called “See You Again.” Khalifa had previously worked with the Knobloch and the franchise on “Fast Six.”
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Over at The Huffington Post, they spoke with Mike Knobloch, President of Film Music and Publishing at Universal Pictures, about how they came to land on the song.
“We knew that technically, when it came to the mechanics of it, there were certain boxes we wanted to check,” Knobloch said of the film’s key song. “Coming off of this incredible two hours of the most sensational action-packed stuff you’ve ever seen in a movie, you have a sequence that needs to be balanced. It has to be appropriately touching and emotional, but you still want people to get out of their seats and leave the theater feeling good. You don’t want the sequence to cancel out the movie they’ve seen, and you certainly don’t want people to walk out feeling sad or that they just attended somebody’s funeral. So getting the music right for the sequence was a key part of that. To have a song that’s earnest and sincere and could underscore a celebration of Paul’s life. To be an anthem for that. We worked really hard to dial that in.”
“We knew that farewell sendoff was the biggest thing for us,” added director James Wan. “We knew we had to push forward — not for the sake of finishing the movie, but for Paul. Everything we did — every idea, every edit and every concept — was about creating an ending that was a fitting and honorable farewell to Paul’s character and his legacy.”
The film is in theaters now.
