Furious 7 Director Reflects on Finishing the Movie After Paul Walker's Death

By Jamie Jirak

Fast X is now playing in theaters, and it was the first film of the franchise to be helmed by Louis Leterrier, who is best known for directing The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Now You See Me (2013). Leterrier stepped in after longtime franchise director Justin Lin reportedly had a "major disagreement" with franchise star Vin Diesel. Lin helmed the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and ninth movies of the franchise. The seventh installment, Furious 7, was directed by Aquaman helmer James Wan. Of course, the seventh film had its own set of challenges due to the tragic passing of Paul Walker. During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Wan opened up about finishing the film after the star's death.

"It definitely was the hardest movie of my career," Wan revealed. "I've done technically challenging movies since then, but Furious 7 just hit on so many different levels, especially an emotional one. It was my first big-budget movie. I made The Conjuring for $20 million, and then Furious 7 was hundreds of millions. But the size of the production did not turn me off; I actually embraced it. I really wanted to create a movie that had the look and smell of their franchise, but I wanted to design set pieces that were a bit more tense, suspenseful, and scary. The first thing that I pitched to Universal's Donna Langley in the room was the scene where the bus is going over the edge of the cliff, and Paul Walker's character, Brian, has to climb onto the side of the bus and run to jump off. Two years later, that became one of the highlights of the trailer."

Wan continued, "When the passing of Paul Walker happened, we were like, 'Do we just shut the movie down for good?' But we collectively felt like this movie needed to be Paul's legacy. So we wiped our tears away and sat around in editorial, going, 'All right, how do we do this?' Thankfully, I had shot certain stuff with Paul, like his ending action stuff, but there were still many bits missing in the film that needed Paul. I shot only half of what I needed from Paul before his passing, and then we worked with visual effects to salvage what we had. To complete that movie now, in today's world, with AI technology, it's so simple. But we did not have that kind of technology at our disposal. So we had to really dig deep into our bag of tricks to make it work, and one of them was having Paul's brothers [Caleb and Cody Walker] step in and shoot the other half of the movie. We then pulled different words that Paul had spoken all through the franchise to create sentences for us."

How Fast X Pays Tribute To Paul Walker:

The Fast franchise has paid tribute to Paul Walker in various ways since his death. In fact, F9 ended with Brian's car pulling up to join the rest of his "family" for a meal. Recently, Vin Diesel assured fans that the final two movies have send-off plans for Brian. In a recent interview with Total Film, Fast X director Louis Leterrier teased scenes with Walker's character, which we now know are from the Fast Five flashbacks at the beginning of the film. 

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"Well, Brian is very much alive in the world of Fast & Furious, and they've teased him a lot in the previous movies. In 9, we see the car coming. It's something that is planned. This movie jumps back and forth between the past and the present. You will see Brian in the past, you won't see Brian in the present. It's something that everybody has to be on board with. The Walker family is still very much a part of this franchise, you'll see how in this movie. It just has to be the right moment, the right tone. I think what James Wan did at the end of 7 was perfect. The tone was perfect. Brian has to re-enter the franchise as perfectly as he left it," Leterrier explained.

Fast X is now playing in theaters. 

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