Paul Walker 'Furious 7' CGI Scenes - Director James Wan Talks 'Lord Of The Rings' Studio Weta's Realistic Digital Replacement For Dead Star With Old Footage

When news broke that the late Paul Walker would be digitally inserted into scenes he never got to finish filming for Furious 7 after his untimely car crash death in 2013, concern spread throughout the film world. We felt a bit better about the idea when his brothers were brought in as stand0ins for him, but what would a CGI version of the actor really look like? In a recent interview, director James Wan addressed these concerns. Plus, the Lord of the Rings digital film masters over at Weta Digital ensured us all that the process was long and hard, but it will work.

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According to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter, Peter Jackson's famed digital studio, Weta has taken the reigns on this all-important project. The company will use a technique similar to that used in Gladiator when star Oliver Reed needed to be replaced with CGI: using unused footage of the actor to create a seamless movie experience.

Speaking with Slash Film on the subject, the director opened up about the process and how it will affect the film.

"I'm not going to say specifically what was what, because I think it's very important that people go into this movie not fixated on trying to work out which is Paul, which isn't Paul. I want them to just watch the movie and enjoy the film and be caught up in the emotion of it all. We worked so hard so that they don't have to do that," Wan said in this on-set interview. "And so I think that's very important and I don't want to kind of fuel that fire so to speak. Maybe years from now, I'll talk about it or maybe at a later day on the track. But needless to say, yes, I wanted to use as much of real Paul as I could. And if that meant stealing a look from the previous movies or whatever, that was the way to do it. I think it's just from a sentimental point of view, I think it wanted to be that."

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