The Fast and the Furious is turning 25, and to celebrate, the cast is dropping some franchise updates.
After a buzzy midnight screening at Cannes earlier this year, Universal is keeping the party going for the 2001 movie that started it all, including re-releasing The Fast and the Furious in theaters and hosting a special event in L.A. on Monday.
Looking back at the Cannes screening, Michelle Rodriguez told The Hollywood Reporter that she was “in awe at all the love that we got,” joking it was particularly powerful “with the studio heads present.”
“Sometimes you fight over things [with the studio] that seem silly, like standing your ground on ethics or morals. From a studio perspective or from a broad macro perspective, it’s like ‘Oh these guys are just criminals, what do we care if they have morals?’” she explained. “We fight for you to understand that it’s not always back and white, there’s always a grey area, and life is like that. All those fights kind of felt worth it” seeing the fan reaction, and long standing ovation, in France.
And after 10 movies over the last two and half decades, there’s an 11th — and allegedly final — on the way, set for release in March 2028. Star and producer Vin Diesel has already publicly gushed about the film, titled Fast Forever, online, calling it “the best script I have read in decades. I am still crying.”
Rodriguez said she has not yet read the script, but “if I have any wish for the last one, it’s that they bring it back to the community because that community has kept us alive for 25 years; it’s a global community, and it has to do with cars, not this 007, bring your cars to space shit,” referencing a plot line from F9. “Let’s get back to what it all started as — an article in the paper about the race scene, let’s go back there.”
Jordana Brewster echoed that she’s talked to Diesel about the new movie but hasn’t seen the script, with hopes that “we kind of go back to L.A., that would be really cool.” And as for if this final movie will really be the end of the film franchise, Rodriguez said, “It’ll be maybe the last one for us; we’re like a bridge to another generation, we’re passing the baton on. But I don’t know, you talk to Vin and maybe it’ll never end.”
On top of Fast Forever, there is also at least one Fast & Furious TV series in works, which will expand on the legacy characters. Brewster said of the pivot to TV, “I so admire the Taylor Sheridan universe, so I feel like we can really do that with television too.” She already has a series pitch ready, suggesting that her and Paul Walker’s characters “have a son and a daughter so I’d love to follow their trajectory and see what hell it is to raise kids that have Mia’s genes, Brian’s genes and Dom’s genes.”
Inside the L.A. screening, Diesel delivered a long and emotional speech for the crowd, saying that after the “amazing experience” of Cannes, “this studio said, ‘We’re going to take that experience and bring it back home.’ I thought that’s incredible, that’s everything.”
He also teased, “There’s going to be an emotion you have when you watch this film — start getting used to that,” ahead of Fast Forever. For the new movie, Diesel revealed “we went to four different writers, four years in development, and after I read the script, halfway through, one tear. By the end of the script, that we crafted and worked so hard to make right for you after four years, I was crying. And I couldn’t hold it back,” adding, “sometimes even the toughest guys in the world need to cry.”
Diesel closed with shouting out Walker’s daughter Meadow in the crowd and recalling how “25 years ago I was sitting in this row and I was sitting with Paul Walker,” calling their friendship the “greatest gift God could bestow upon you. So watch this movie and see where this eternal brotherhood started in every frame.”
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