Paul Walker’s brothers are helping “fill in small gaps” in “Fast & Furious 7” action sequences not finished before the actor’s death, producers said Tuesday.
Walker died in a fiery car crash during a Thanksgiving break in filming last November, forcing a halt to production.
“We had to take time to grieve Paul, the brother we love and lost, and to figure out if we should move on with our film,” producers wrote to fans in a Facebook post Tuesday.
The decision to resume filming was “the only choice,” the note said. We believe our fans want that, and we believe Paul would want that, too.”
Walker’s dramatic scenes were completed before his death but some action sequences were unfinished, they said.
“We have resumed shooting and now welcome Paul’s brothers, Caleb and Cody, into our ‘Fast’ family,” the post said. “Caleb and Cody are helping us complete some remaining action for their brother and fill in small gaps left in production. Having them on set has made us all feel that Paul is with us, too.”
The movie was to have been released this summer, but Universal pushed it back to April 10, 2015.
“This film is the most important we’ve ever done together,” the post said. “It will allow the character of Brian O’Conner to live on and let us celebrate Paul in his most defining role.”
Walker’s O’Conner character is a staple of the long-running and hugely profitable film franchise.
Directed by James Wan, it also stars Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez and Jason Statham.
Investigators concluded in a report released in March that speed was to blame in Walker’s death.
“Investigators determined the cause of the fatal solo-vehicle collision was unsafe speed for the roadway conditions,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Commander Mike Parker said.
The high-performance 2005 Porsche Carrera GT was going “between 80 and 93 mph at the time the car impacted a power pole and several trees,” the final report said. The posted speed limit on the Santa Clarita, California, office park road was 45 mph.
Walker, 40, and friend Roger Rodas, 38, had no drugs or alcohol in their blood, the report said. Both men were wearing seat belts.
The airbags deployed as they should have when the car clipped a light pole and several trees, investigators said. Nothing mechanical went wrong to cause the Porsche to leave the wide road. Investigators found “no pre-existing conditions that would have caused this collision,” the report said.
Walker and Rodas, racing team partners, left a charity event at a car shop co-owned by the men to take a ride in an office park in the community of Valencia in Santa Clarita, about 30 miles north of Hollywood. The crash happened a few hundred yards away on a wide street.
