After Paul Walker’s tragic death in 2013, it was assumed that his Fast & Furious character would be exiting the franchise. Well, that almost wasn’t the case.
Paul Walker was recreated with CGI, and the help of his brother, to film his goodbye scenes in Furious 7. It was tasteful and fans enjoyed the send-off. However, in a recent interview, Fate of the Furious director F. Gary Gray revealed that the creative team discussed using that same tactic in the eighth film, making Walker an actual character in the film.
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While speaking with ScreenRant, Gray said that his team had talked about multiple ways of addressing Brian in F8, and CGI was a possibility.
“We had hundreds of conversations about the best way, the classiest way to handle and address Paul’s legacy in this franchise. You know, there’s multiple ways you can go. You could create a digital Paul and make him more of a character. You could leave him out and pretend that he’s in this world anymore. These are all conversations we had and we felt like the choice we made respected his legacy the best. And my understanding is that his family was really happy with how we treated him.”
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Let’s be glad this didn’t happen. Paul’s untimely death was handled perfectly in Fate of the Furious, and his legacy was able to live on through the film. It seems as though a CGI version of him would have been a distraction.
Photo Credit: Universal Pictures
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