When Paul Walker died in a car crash in November before the filming of "Fast and Furious 7" was completed, it was clear that the actor's untimely death could lead to the largest insurance claim in Hollywood history.
Now that seems to be the case. The culmination of the special effects performances, a 13-week photo shoot, will be in July with a big stage featuring 600 people in Rosmond, California.
However, according to a source close to the production, tensions are rising between Universal Pictures and its insurance company Fireman's Fund over the size of the record insurance claim, which is about $ 50 million.
The cost of completing Fast and Furious 7, whose initial budget was $ 200 million, will be high, although according to a person involved in the project, the plot has not changed drastically since Walker's death. "
They complete the film, more or less as in the original script, superimposing Paul's face with a computer-generated image, "according to the same source." Two of Paul's brothers and another actor "play" Paul when necessary. "
However, the cost jumps significantly as the presence of the Walker image is provided by three different cameras simultaneously. "There's a huge amount of technique. Each scene with Paul is filmed three times. Three actors and seven cameras on stage are costly."
Director James One will also resort to some of the unused photos that Walk has taken in the previous two films Fast and the Furious.
It all turns out to be quite expensive, and according to insurance broker Brian Kingman of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., Fireman's Fund will have to pay more than $ 50 million for the film, which is now estimated to cost $ 250 million or more.
According to some reports, even the delay in shooting a production of this magnitude can cost $ 250,000 a day, which ultimately leads to the accumulation of millions of dollars.
In the case of Fast and Furious 7, Walker's death on November 30 at the age of 40 after a crash with Porsche not only led to more than a 4-month production delay, but also required additional work by screenwriter Chris Morgan before filming could resume. .
The end of the filming, which was supposed to end in January, is now scheduled for July, which requires the production to pay stars like Vin Diesel more money to keep them for longer.
The record for a paid insurance claim on a high-budget film so far belongs to Marvel's Iron Man 3, whose filming was delayed by three weeks in August 2012 after star Robert Downey Jr. broke his ankle. According to some sources, the claim at the time was for between 10 and 15 million dollars.
More than $ 20 million was paid when John Candy died during the filming of the Caravans of the East in 1994. The film was then completed, but performed poorly in theaters.
Filming of Fast and the Furious resumed in April in Atlanta, after which the film was shot in Abu Dhabi for a week. The production is now in Southern California.
Source: Insurance.bg