When studios are spending millions to produce a movie, part of the movie’s cost goes to insurance. The insurance is used to protect them if anything goes wrong.
That is why certain actors such as Lindsay Lohans are “uninsurable” because insurance companies will not take a risk insuring an actor who frequently causes problems such as shooting delays. For example, a single cancelled day will cost a production company on average $250,000.
Fast and Furious 7 was delayed due to the death of their leading actor, Paul Walker, and as a result, the insurance claim on Paul was a record breaking $50 million dollars. On top of that, the movie budget has increased to $250 million dollars.
…insurance broker Brian Kingman of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. believes Fireman’s Fund will have to pay more than $50 million on a film now estimated to cost $250 million or more. A spokesman for Fireman’s Fund declined comment, but in a 2012 discussion about the challenges of movie-business insurance, Fireman’s Fund entertainment underwriting director Wendy Diaz noted that delays alone can cost as much as $250,000 a day on a big- budget movie, adding up to “millions of dollars.”
A shoot set to wrap in January now is scheduled to end in July, requiring the production to pay stars including Vin Diesel more to keep them longer. Fireman’s Fund is not on the hook for the entire cost of finishing the movie because Universal must pay what it would have cost to complete the project had the accident not occurred. But therein lies the dispute because it is a matter of judgment what producer Neal Moritz and the studio felt was required to finish the film without Walker. [Hollywood Reporter]
But, there are a ton of additional costs, now that Paul Walker’s role will still be featured in the movie:
“They are finishing the film more or less as scripted, replacing Paul with [computer-generated] face replacement,” says this person. “They have two of Paul’s brothers as well as an actor to ‘play’ Paul when needed.” (The Walker brothers, 25-year-old Cody and 36-year-old Caleb, both are helping fill in for their brother physically — Caleb primarily for body size and mannerisms and Cody for the eyes. But the filmmakers need to create a character that not only looks like Paul but also performs like him. That’s the actor’s job.) Peter Jackson’s Weta is tackling the effects work using three cameras (in addition to the main-unit cameras) to capture Walker’s stand-ins for face replacement. “There is a massive amount of gear,” reports the source. “Everything they want with Paul gets done three times over. Three [actors] times seven cameras per shot is a clusterf— of money being spent.” [Hollywood Reporter]
Everything has to be done three times using seven different cameras per shot. If you have ever been on set, doing a scene twice can be frustrating enough but, seven times. Talk about a long and slow process to film a movie. Consider this a stop motion feature film animating all of Paul Walker’s parts.
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