To celebrate the release of Furious 7, let’s take a look at 7 things you probably didn’t
know about the seventh movie in the nitrous-oxide-charged franchise.
The sequence in the movie that shows Dom and the Fast family drive out of a cargo plane
in mid-flight was a real practical stunt!
The scene was filmed over three days in the Arizona desert with a C-130 plane and two
sets of five driverless cars, each of which was dropped two or three times from the aircraft
at heights of 10,000 to 12,000 feet.
Camera-mounted helicopters and skydiving camera operators were used to capture the action.
One of car co-ordinator Dennis McCarthy’s favourite vehicles in the movie is the off-road
version of Dom’s 1968 Dodge Charger, which McCarthy made from scratch with his crew.
It was also the most expensive car to build for Furious 7.
The real challenge with building that car was fitting all the custom components of an
off-road vehicle into the body of the Charger while still leaving room for Vin Diesel!
When Dennis McCarthy wanted a particularly unique car for Dom, he went looking in Las
Vegas at the annual SEMA car show.
That’s where he found a 1968 Dodge Charger called “Maximus”, which was a custom-fabricated
build by Nelson Racing Engines and Scott Spock Racing.
The one-off, brushed metal ultra-car has a 2000-horsepower engine and is valued at over
$1 million.
Furious 7’s Abu Dhabi sequence features W Motors’ Lykan Hypersport, one of the world’s
fastest and most expensive cars at around $3.4 million.
The car features white gold, sapphires and diamonds, and was the most expensive car featured
in Furious 7.
To keep costs down though, W Motors built five replicas of the car for the movie, using
the same molds as their original vehicle but building the car out of fibreglass instead
of carbon fibre.
Those five replicas were used for filming the movie’s stunts, while an original Lykan
was used for close-up beauty shots.
The luxurious penthouse apartment in Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Towers where the Fast family crash
a billionaire’s party was actually a set built north of Atlanta!
Filming took place over the course of a week and the set was made to withstand stunt drivers
speeding and drifting through it while other stunt performers, dressed as wealthy party-goers,
leapt out of the way!
Several other sets including Hobbs’ office and the cement factory were also built in
the same location.
The Race Wars scene in Furious 7 was filmed in Lancaster about 70 miles north of downtown
LA.
Letty’s Race Wars ride is a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, which we also saw in Fast & Furious
6.
There were hundreds of extras on location, including car club members and fans of the
franchise, and there were more than 300 cars.
Temperatures during filming were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.
Furious 7 screenwriter Chris Morgan used a system of colour-coded Post-It notes to keep
track of everything in the Fast & Furious world, including characters, cars, plot points,
and even Dom’s silver cross pendant!
Furious 7 is the fifth Fast & Furious movie written by Morgan.
The first Fast film he wrote was Tokyo Drift.
Well there you have it, 7 things you probably didn't know about Furious 7!
Let me know in the comments below, whether you’d like to see more Fast & Furious movies
after this one, and what you’d like to see happen in them.
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Thanks for watching!
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!