4) Paul Walker – Furious 7
Fast and Furious fans were crushed when the franchise’s star, Paul Walker, was killed in a car crash in 2013. This caused a big problem for Furious 7, which was only halfway through production at the time. To bring the late actor back to life, director James Wan hired Peter Jackson’s company Weta Digital, who had previously turned Andy Serkis into Gollum and King Kong to great success.
Their job was made a lot easier when they cast Walker’s two brothers, Caleb and Cody, to stand in as the actor, as they both had a great resemblance to Paul. With two solid body stand-ins in place, they then recreated Paul’s face with CGI, basing it off footage pulled from outtakes or old unused footage. One big issue was that Weta needed to relight every shot of his face digitally, to match the lightning used in the movie scenes. It was a monumental task for the company, but in the end they pulled it off, re-creating a whopping 350 digital shots for Furious 7.