As expected,Furious 7opened with a massive first weekend at the box office, taking in an enormous $143.6 million, the highest opening weekend in history for the month of April. The sequel was originally set to open last year, but was pushed to April 2015 after the tragic death ofFast & Furiousfranchise starPaul Walker. While doing press forFurious 7, directorJames Wanrevealed that the original ending, which was scrapped afterPaul Walker’s death, would have helped set upFast & Furious 8. Here’s what the director had to say below.
“The original ending ofFurious 7was setting up, you know, the bigger world of where theFast & Furiousfranchise 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 toPaul 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.”
Naturally, it isn’t known exactly how the original ending would have set upFast & Furious 8, butVin Dieselhas already teased that the eighth installment will take place in New York City, and thatFurious 7starKurt Russellwill reprise his role as Mr. Nobody. It also isn’t known if they had planned on using a end credits sequence, like they did in 2013’sFast & Furious 6, where they introducedJason Statham’s Deckhard Shaw as the villain forFurious 7. Shooting was more than half-way completed whenPaul Walkerpassed away in late November 2013, with the production shutting down for several months to give the cast and crew time to grieve, and give filmmakers time to craft a proper send-off forPaul Walker’s Brian O’Connor.
What do you think about the original ending? Are you glad that they chose to pay tribute toPaul Walkerinstead of setting up the next movie in the franchise? Let us know what you think below, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted about more regardingFast & Furious 8as soon as we have more details.
