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When Paul Walker tragically passed away midway through the production of Furious 7, Universal and director James Wan faced a difficult task. Do they scuttle the film or charge ahead, using rewrites and body doubles to finish Walker’s performance? They ultimately went with the latter option but refused to go into any details. Now, a new report confirms that a digitally recreated Walker appears in the film and that he was brought to life by the same company that made Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Caesar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
The news comes to us via The Hollywood Reporter, who say that Peter Jackson’s WETA Digital was quietly hired to finish the journey of Walker’s Bryan O’Connor. Although WETA declined to comment, it makes sense. If you’re going to hire a special effects company to resurrect a dead actor, you might as well go with the people already known for creating photorealistic, lifelike characters.
Before you think Universal made a crass decision here, it should be noted that Furious 7 is actually very tasteful on this front. Viewers who pay careful attention will note that the majority of Walker’s unfinished scenes are completed using his brothers Caleb and Cody as doubles. When combined with CGI, carefully chosen camera angles and the right lighting, they are the spitting image of Paul.
Walker is not the first actor to get temporarily revived through visual effects. Oliver Reed was digitally recreated for his unfinished scenes in Gladiator when he passed away during production and Nancy Marchand had one final scene on The Sopranos after her death. And then there are the countless commercials that resurrect iconic celebrities like Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee to hock modern products. (If you ask us, using CGI to finish a late actor’s performance is weird but understandable. But commercials? That’s kinda’ gross.)As tasteful and subtle as WETA’s work is in Furious 7, the article from the Hollywood Reporter can’t help but suggest a darker future where actors are scanned and their likenesses used for years to come (which just so happens to be the subject of the excellent sci-fi film The Congress). They note how actors are already digitally recreated for impossible action scenes, but some performers are apparently being scanned for “archival” reasons. In theory, this means Chris Evans could keep on playing Captain America for the next century. In theory, that is also when we stop watching movies.
The 36-year-old Caleb Walker fills in for his departed brother’s body and mannerisms and the 25-year-old Cody Walker supplies the eyes. The third piece of this puzzle — the unnamed actor — handles the performance, working to replicate Paul’s work as closely as possible. The production team is working with Weta Digital to work its movie magic on this conglomeration of performances, with three cameras being used specifically for the face replacement process.
“Everything they want with Paul gets done three times over. Three [actors] times seven cameras per shot is a clusterf— of money being spent,” the source said. Director James Wan is also incorporating unused Walker footage from the previous two Fast & Furious films.
Already budgeted as a $200 million production, Fast & Furious 7 could end up costing more than $250 million, with the studio’s insurer covering around $50 million of that price tag . The $50 million insurance claim would cover the cost of shooting each of Walker’s scenes multiple times with body doubles, the CGI process used to put Walker’s face on the stand-ins, and all of the necessary script edits resulting from the actor’s death. It would also be an industry record for insurance claims.Taking out insurance on big-budget films is standard operating procedure for most Hollywood films these days, with studios hoping to protect their projects in the event of unexpected events that affect production time and completion of the film. Prior to Fast & Furious 7, the largest recorded insurance settlements were $10-15 million paid out when Robert Downey Jr. broke his ankle while filming Iron Man 3 in 2012 and an earlier settlement for $20 million when John Candy died during the filming of Wagons East! in 1994.
Now, this is not a new trick production companies are pushing out but of course it's become much easier to pull off with companies such as WETA at the helm. Check out more of their work at the link provided and be sure to sound off in the comments below as to what you think about the added scenes of Paul Walker.
[via Screen Crush & DigitalTrends]
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