What was the original ending of Furious 7 going to be before Paul Walker’s death?

As most fans remember, Paul Walker was midway through filming Furious 7 when his life was tragically cut short. Universal slammed the brakes while the creative team wrestled with whether the film could, or even should, continue. Months later, cameras rolled again with Walker’s brothers stepping in as stand-ins and cutting-edge VFX helping complete his performance. The finished film delivered an unexpectedly moving farewell, letting Brian O’Conner ride off into the sunset. But what was the original ending for Furious 7 before tragedy reshaped the movie?

Thanks to Barry Hertz’s new book, Welcome to the Family (via ScreenRant), we finally have more details on the original ending of Furious 7.

“Originally, [Furious 7] ended with the whole crew back at Neptune’s Net, the Malibu seafood joint off Pacific Coast Highway where Brian and Dom had bonded in the first movie, celebrating the successful retrieval of the ‘God’s Eye’ MacGuffin that Jason Statham’s villain, Deckard Shaw, was pursuing,” Hertz wrote. “But instead of giving the device back to the mysterious government agent Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), who had just awarded the team congressional commendations, Dom crushes the God’s Eye under his boot, saying that it was too powerful for any one person to possess. The team then roars off onto the PCH, with the smiling Dom crumpling the commendation into a ball and tossing it out the window as the score swells and the end credits roll.“

Hertz added that the team would have “picked their next destination by throwing a knife at a nearby map, letting ‘fate’ decide.” However, Walker’s death changed all this, and the new ending allowed his character to retire happily with his family.

Related

Fast & Furious 7 Revisited: The tragic loss of Paul Walker brings about the end of an era

Although Furious 7 provided a perfect ending for O’Conner, he could be returning for Fast & Furious 11. Franchise star Vin Diesel confirmed as much earlier this summer, saying, “The studio said to me, ‘Vin, can we please have the finale of Fast & Furious April 2027? I said under three conditions: The first is to bring the franchise back to L.A…The second thing was to return to the car culture, to the street racing!…You wanna know what the third thing was?…The third thing was reuniting Dom and Brian O’Conner. That is what you’re gonna get in the finale! Love you!” However, a more recent report cast serious doubt over whether the finale will ever be made. Although Fast X grossed $714 million worldwide, it also cost a whopping $378 million. The studio wants to drastically lower the budget, aiming for a figure of $200 million or less. Just last month, Diesel stated that the budget issues had been resolved, even hinting that production would commence in Los Angeles before the end of the year, but we’re still waiting.

If Walker were still with us, the Fast saga would almost certainly feel different. Brian was the perfect foil to Diesel’s growly Dom. Without that balance, the sequels have leaned a little too heavily on Diesel’s gruff delivery and the ever-echoing devotion to “family.”

The post What was the original ending of Furious 7 going to be before Paul Walker’s death? appeared first on JoBlo.