‘Furious 7’ director reveals the original planned ending behind the feature film, if Paul Walker had not died in that tragic car accident.
‘Furious 7’ is a major hit at the box office. Reports suggest the ‘Fast and Furious‘ franchise is speeding to $150 million making it one of the biggest releases of 2015. But, it has been a long time coming for the cast and crew behind ‘Furious 7’. In the middle of production, Paul Walker was killed in a tragic car accident which forced producers, writers, and the movie‘s director to shift gears and figure out what to do next.
In a recent interview with Collider.com, James Wan, the director of ‘Furious 7’ revealed how Paul Walker’s death changed the movie and how they were forced to change the ending behind the action-thriller. Ultimately, producers decided to go with a tribute movie towards Paul Walker instead of expanding the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise universe.
I’m a big fan of the franchise. I’m curious, have you guys talked about what the original ending was gonna be for Furious 7?Â
WAN: Yeah, listen, the original ending served a very different purpose.
Going into Furious 8?
WAN: Yeah, exactly. The original ending of Furious 7 was setting up, you know, the bigger world of where the Fast and Furious franchise could go into. And that’s obviously very smart of them to think so. But when the tragedy happened, all of that became irrelevant. So it did not matter anymore, all of that stuff. And to the studio’s credit, they did not push for that. They realized how important it was to make a movie that finishes and that just outright is a tribute to Paul Walker. So I give them a lot of credit for being bigger than that and going along with this ending that is the right ending to go with.
But James Wan admits that it was extremely tough to continue filming.
WAN: Yeah, I really hope so, because you know when I first heard the news, I was shell-shocked like everyone, and it took me days to come to terms with it. And then after that, heartbreaks started sinking in and we realized that Paul [Walker] wasn’t going to be around with us anymore moving forward. And it was a really hard one. And finishing the movie was the last thing on my mind at that point. It was more the idea of you know, picking up the pieces, going back on set, you know rallying the team, the cast, and the crew, and as the director having to put on the brave face and sort of like champion and push everyone along, the idea of that was very daunting for me. But it became very apparent to all of us that we needed to finish this movie to honor Paul’s legacy and to basically honor his memories, and moving forward that became our number one goal. Like nothing else mattered, it was about making this movie for Paul.
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