Readers of CarNewsCafe will remember the tragic passing of actor Paul Walker best known for his role as Brian O’Connor in the Fast and the Furious movies. Walker died in December after an accident in his friend’s Porsche GT coming back from a charity event.
While family, friends, and fans of Paul Walker are upset about the actor’s death, this left Universal Studios with the conundrum of how to figure out a way to salvage the Fast & Furious 7 movie and the entire franchise. Reportedly Universal has already dropped $150 million dollars into filming. The issue Universal has is what do they do with the character of Brian O’Connor?
Roughly half of the scenes in the movie were shot with Paul Walker. Universal is currently shooting the scenes they were not able to get with Walker with four body-doubles. In post production they will use computer generated imagery (CGI) to recreate Paul Walker’s face in those scenes on the body-doubles. Since CGI has come a long way it will be interesting to see how this is pulled off. The issue with this though is you still need someone that sounds like Paul Walker.
Luckily for Universal Paul Walker has two younger brothers, Caleb Walker and Cody Walker. It’s been confirmed by the studio both of them will act as voice-overs in scenes filmed with the body-doubles in Fast and Furious 7. This is ideal for Cody Walker, 25, since he was already working as a stuntman on the new Fast and Furious movie. I’m sure Caleb Walker is happy to do this as well as Universal has indicated they will donate profits from Fast and Furious 7 to Paul Walker’s charity.
What’s odd to CarNewsCafe is why didn’t they have Cody Walker brush up on some acting skills, then play him in the movie. Use someone that looks and sounds like Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker’s character in the Fast & Furious) seems like a lot less work but hey, that’s just our opinion. It’s yet to be seen if Caleb Walker or Cody Walker were offered to be in future movies in the franchise.
It was thought the scriptwriter might write in Paul Walker’s real death into the movie but most felt that was in bad taste. It seems that using the body doubles along with Caleb Walker and Cody Walker as voice overs is probably the most ideal solution. Although if it will work has yet to be seen. The movie is going to come out next April. I’m sure after that Universal Studios is still keen to keep the 13 year-old movie franchise going strong.
*Article originally published here
