The first thing that struck me is that it puts the reality of racing around recklessly in cars into perspective. There's the fantasy of those films -- and then the reality of the consequences that can happen if you actually drive that way, which it sounds like possibly happened here (though it sounds as if Walker wasn't driving, his friend/business partner was)
Paul Walker -- best known for his role in "The Fast and the Furious" movies -- died Saturday afternoon after a single-car accident and explosion in Southern California ... TMZ has learned.
The accident happened in Santa Clarita -- north of Los Angeles -- and according to multiple sources connected to Paul ... the actor was in a Porsche when the driver somehow lost control and slammed into a post or a tree ... and then the car burst into flames.
Several of our sources -- some who are still at the scene of the accident -- tell us Paul and another person in the car were killed. Law enforcement is still on the scene, and we're told the L.A. County Coroner's Office is on the way.
At this point, it's unclear what caused the accident, or who was behind the wheel when it happened.
Paul was 40 years old.
Sources close to Paul tell us he was in Santa Clarita for a car show to support the Philippines typhoon relief effort, and had been taking friends out for rides in his new Porsche GT. The accident happened during one of those test spins.
A rep for the actor confirms Paul died today in the crash after leaving a charity event.
As an actor Walker starred in several noteworthy films beyond Fast & The Furious. EIGHT BELOW was an excellent Disney live-action film that Walker was solid in and THE SKULLS is a guilt pleasure that I've long been a fan of.
You wonder the enormous damper this puts on the F&F franchise -- even if his character is written out, I have no idea if filming had finished on the next sequel (due out in July '14)...at any rate, a very tragic event.
Heard this, and was wondering if it were a hoax or not (star of car chase franchise dies in car crash...seems too apt). I've never found Walker to be an especially charismatic actor, but dying at age 40 is a shame regardless.
FF7 was not done by any means. They still had plenty of scenes left to shoot with Paul Walker, and they hadn't done the location work in Abu Dhabi yet. My understanding is that they have shut the production down while they work out what changes they will need to make to the script. I believe that they will preserve as much as they can and try to do as little reshooting as possible. Somehow, they will need to write his character out of the movie at a certain point. The kicker is that if they've shot the closing wrap-up scenes or any of the big climactic stunt material yet, he'll appear to drop in and out of the movie. I think it's more likely that they'll find an exit ramp somewhere in the script and then reshoot any material that involved him to take him out of the rest of the story.
It's tragically ironic that he died in this fashion. And it's even more ironic that rumor sites were saying he had died two days earlier and had just been debunked.
One article I read tonight said the majority of the film was completed outside the location shoot in Abu Dhabi that you mentioned David. I don't know how accurate that is, but again, without seeing the script, it's impossible to know what he finished, or where the character goes in this film, but I did note during the last sequel that there was no point in having Walker's love interest (Jordana Brewster) even in the story now. If there's some way they could write him out based on footage they've shot, it'd make sense because his (and their) story line seemed played out -- if there's an exit ramp as you put it, it'd be nice if they could go that route instead of killing him off in a crash, which would be tasteless (though would be the easiest way to go).
These films have become increasingly ensemble driven...it's funny to look back on F&F 1 and see Walker getting top billing over Diesel. Then the second film was all his...when the whole cast returned on the 4th movie, it was more Diesel's series, and has remained that way, so I don't think it'll have much of an impact at the box-office. Instead it's more a very sad end to a guy who seemed, at least in the stories that have come out, to have been a nice guy off camera and died too soon, which is the real shame.
I've heard the line that they were mostly done as well, but that makes little sense given that they only started shooting at the end of September, and only had been going for about 2 months before they stopped. I'd say they were actually perhaps halfway through the shoot, as they still had significant work left in Atlanta before going to Abu Dhabi, and I don't know if they intended to do any shooting in Los Angeles.
We'll have to see what they come up with. For the moment, they're shut down, and the cast is not in any condition to keep shooting.
It is interesting to note that 40 some odd people died in an awful NY train crash and that's been completely overshadowed by this.
It was 4 -- not to diminish it, because scores more were injured -- and I totally understand that. At the same time, though, none of those people were famous, and even though most of the world didn't know Paul Walker personally, there's a type of connection the public has with entertainers that makes a death like his resonate more than the loss of a total stranger. Not to compare Walker with Marilyn Monroe or John Lennon, but the phenomena is the same.
That NY train crash was terrible...and so is the fact it was apparently caused by the driver dozing off. Horrible.
Everything I've been reading so far says that they were about halfway done with shooting, with Walker still to shoot several crucial scenes. It seems they'll need to do a substantial overhaul to finish what they've started. The most obvious route seems to me to make his character's death a key point in the plot, though who's to say what kind of reverse engineering that would require and, more importantly, how best to handle it within the film considering how the man died.
ETA: Not to get too morbid, but it could end up making this a much more interesting and deeply felt film than what was originally planned.
