Tag: HollywoodReporter

He’s amassed more than 140 credits on an enviable resumé that dates back to the early 1990s, but David Krumholtz seems ready to throw in the towel on his Hollywood career.

In a shocking announcement posted (and later deleted) on social media, Krumholtz said he’s “frustrated, fed up, fried” with the business, so much so that he already sent an email to declare it done. Once the decision was made, Krumholtz felt a “huge wave of relief” wash over him.

“I kinda sorta put my acting career on hold the other day. It’s been something I’ve been petrified to do for years. Specifically, the fear was that I’d go broke and not be able to handle being out of the game. But I sent the definitive email,” he shared on Threads. “And gotta say, a huge wave of relief washed over me. Not sure what I’m going to do for money instead, or how I’m going to do it, but I just removed a humongous burden, one that I truly didn’t fathom the weight of until it was gone. Frustrated, fed up, fried.”

The post received tons of traction immediately, and Krumholtz continued the conversation by responding in comments to fans expressing their disappointment, encouragement or support, as well as posting additional replies. “The love and encouragement re: my last post is overwhelmingly surprising. Acting professionally is a very different concept than the exercise of acting itself. I’ve enjoyed every single minute of exercising the muscle. I’ve enjoyed the fanfare. There was a time when being competitive and self-involved really served my pursuit. That time has passed. Much to MY overwhelming surprise. There will always be great joy in the exercise. But for me, the profession has lost its gleam.”

Fellow actor Garret Dillahunt was among those who responded by posting, “This is sad news for me. But I am happy for you. I understand completely.” Krumholtz wrote back and further elaborated on his next moves: “Ain’t over, rather, redefining my terms. Hoping to find a new, more rewarding passion. Me, my product, and [my] mentality is not working anymore. I want to try to be of service. No crystal ball.”

The 48-year-old veteran actor hails from New York and has worked consistently since breaking into the business on both the big and small screens with parts in Law & Order, Life with Mikey, Addams Family Values, The Santa Clause franchise (playing the beloved Head Elf Bernard) and the Ice Storm, to name a few early roles. He had regular roles on such shows as Monty, Chicago Sons, The Closer, The Trouble With Normal and Numb3rs, the latter of which lasted the longest with 119 episodes.

He also starred in high-profile movies like Slums of Beverly Hills opposite Natasha Lyonne, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Mexican, Sidewalks of New York, Ray, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Crazy for Love, Bobby, Superbad, This is the End, Hail, Caesar! and more. He played Isidor Rabi in Christopher Nolan’s best picture winner Oppenheimer, which earned him rave reviews, and had a busy last couple of years starring in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and opposite Seth Rogen in The Studio and Sausage Party: Foodtopia. Most recently, he starred as Zor-El in Supergirl.

Paul M. Pollard, a veteran camera operator with credits including Bound for Glory, Heaven’s Gate, Northern Exposure and The Larry Sanders Show, has died. He was 84.

Pollard died Aug. 1 of heart issues at Southern California Hospital (formerly Brotman Medical Center) in Culver City, his daughter, Georgia Pollard, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The son of a special effects man at 20th Century Fox, Pollard also shot Bud Greenspan’s 16 Days of Glory (1985), the definitive documentary about the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and the 1986 TV special Ozzy Osbourne: The Ultimate Ozzy, which captures the singer live in concert.

As a camera technician, Pollard worked for famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler on Bound for Glory (1976), the biopic of Woody Guthrie that was directed by Hal Ashby. Wexler won an Oscar for his work, which included a pioneering 2-minute, 15-second Steadicam shot that trailed and then led David Carradine as the folk singer through a crowd of migrant workers.

He teamed with Wexler again on Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982).

Pollard surely kept busy as an operator for cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond on Heaven’s Gate (1980), the famously over-budget frontier epic that was filmed mainly at a studio-constructed town in Glacier National Park in Montana. Director Michael Cimino ordered up more than 1.3 million feet of film — nearly 220 hours — for that.

The youngest of three kids, Paul Michael Pollard was born in Los Angeles on April 11, 1942. His father was A. Paul Pollard, who was head of construction at Fox and handled effects on such landmark films as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), The Great Escape (1963), Dirty Harry (1971) and The Outlaw Jose Wales (1976). His mom, Irene, was a homemaker.

Pollard attended Culver High School and lived with an aunt and uncle in Montana while working on a cattle ranch, then helped out his dad on movie sets.

He was a greensman on Lewis Milestone’s remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and as a cable man on the auto racing drama Winning (1969), then graduated to assistant camera on True Grit (1969), They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! (1970) and Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha (1972).

Pollard’s big-screen credits also included Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit (1981), John Landis’ Into the Night (1985), Roger Spottiswoode’s Air America (1990), Mick Jackson’s L.A. Story (1991), Gillies MacKinnon’s A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) and Jon Avnet’s The War (1994).

And for TV, he worked on In the Heat of the Night, Northern Exposure, Space: Above and Beyond, If Not for You and The Larry Sanders Show and served as director of photography on the 1997 Fox series 413 Hope St.

Pollard was once involved in a helicopter crash while filming in France, his daughter noted.

Survivors also include his son, Justin; grandchildren Aurelia and Juliet; sister JoAnn; and nephews Greg, Chris, and Jeff.

He was married and divorced four times; two of his wives were script supervisor Kathleen Newport and first camera assistant Tama Takahashi.

Shawn Hatosy is a first-rate actor who has been in the business for more than 35 years, working on screens big and small, but primarily making his name on TV drama series.

Hatosy memorably played an L.A. cop on Southland, which ran from 2009 through 2013, and for which he was nominated for a Critics Choice Award. He was a twisted ex-con on Animal Kingdom, which ran from 2016 through 2022. And, since 2025, he has been playing Dr. Jack Abbot, a former combat medic turned attending physician working the night shift at a Pittsburgh hospital, on HBO Max’s The Pitt, winning the best guest actor in a drama series Emmy for the show’s first season, and landing a currently-pending Emmy nom for best supporting actor in a drama series for its second season, during which he also directed an episode of the massively acclaimed show.

Over the course of a conversation at the L.A. offices of The Hollywood Reporter, the 50-year-old reflected on his entry into the business in his early teens while he was living in the Baltimore area; his relocation to New York and then L.A., where, in his 20s, he was in particularly high demand for teen-targeted projects; what sparked his lengthy collaboration with TV creator John Wells, which now spans 20 years and five projects, from ER through The Pitt; how he feels about calls for a Pitt-spinoff about the titular hospital’s night shift; plus more.

You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player above or read excerpts of it — lightly edited for clarity and brevity — below.

On early parts that got away…

“There were so many actors that I would brush up against. Tobey Maguire was one of them — Wonder Boys was a big one, and Cider House Rules. American Beauty [the part eventually played by Wes Bentley] was something that I was really wanted — everybody wanted that, and I remember being in the room on that one… I remember getting asked to audition for Breaking Bad [the part eventually played by Aaron Paul], and it was not a time where AMC was anything — Mad Men hadn’t even come out yet — so I wasn’t jumping up and down to do that.”

On the beginning of his special relationship with TV creator John Wells…

“I was going through a rough patch personally at that time, and I just was not taking great care of myself. I was drinking a lot and I had just become a father. The ER audition came and I was still in that mindset of, ‘I’m a film actor. I’m not doing that.’ And my manager said, ‘You should take a look at this role. This is a good role. And John’s directing it. And the ones that he directs, they’re really special.’ So I looked at it, and he was right. I went in and had a really great audition for a very challenging role — he’s multiple personalities, and there’s a lot of range in those three characters that I got to play, and it was juicy. I remember doing it. I remember the feeling of how John created space for me to take big risks… And so at the end of it, I felt really, really good. And I reached out and I sent him [Wells] a card and said, ‘I just really enjoyed that. And if something else comes up…’ I’m sure he’s had 7,000 of those letters, but I’m glad I did it.”

On NBC’s decision to cancel Wells’ Southland, on which Hatosy starred with Ben McKenzie, after one season had aired and a second season had already been largely shot…

“We had already shot six episodes of season two. We were airing in like three weeks, and they just canceled us. I’ve never been more shocked in my life, honestly. When I got that phone call, we hadn’t even aired season two, and they canceled us. And I knew what was in the chamber, I knew what kind of television we were making. So it was a big surprise. And then TNT came in and rescued it. I think it was great because it sort of shrunk the show. But it was very complicated for us actors. First of all, some of the actors didn’t make it to TNT because they did have to shrink it. I was one of the characters that was on the fence, so I sort of got reduced salary-wise… It was like a good year and a half before we came back up to production. So it was really a terrifying time.”

On why he experienced the driest stretch of his career after his acclaimed work on Animal Kingdom…

“It’s a really good question. I think part of it is a result of how the business shifted from in-room casting to self-tape, because I think that actors have a superpower when they’re coming into a room, [whereas] I’ll see a self-tape and you have no idea, ‘How many takes did they do? Is it four hours?’ [I struck out with self-tapes by the] dozens — like over 60, probably more.”

On the dichotomy of Dr. Abbot on The Pitt…

“There’s nothing he hasn’t seen, and not only in the ER — he’s a combat veteran and he’s lost his leg, so he’s seen the worst nightmares imaginable to a human being, and that doesn’t phase him. Nothing phases him anymore. And you have two guys [Abbot and Robby] who, when it comes to medicine, there’s nothing they can’t solve. They can do anything. They know what to prescribe. But when they’re dealing with their mental health, they are lost. And that’s just a beautiful, sad truth.”

On landing his first Emmy nomination — and winning — for season one of The Pitt…

“I get emotional thinking about it. Just learning that I was nominated really nailed me — emotionally, I was overwhelmed, I was so thrilled. And then to go through that whole experience and have Ron Howard [announce me as the winner and hand me the statuette]? He’s somebody that I look up to. As a kid, when I would stay home from school he was on my TV on The Andy Griffith Show, and when I would come home from school Happy Days was in rerun. That guy is so important to me. Yeah, that was a huge, huge moment. And I won an Emmy before Noah [laughs — Hatosy was presented with his Emmy at one of the Creative Arts Awards ceremonies, whereas Wyle won best actor in a drama series later at the Primetime ceremony].

On the future of Dr. Abbot and the possibility of a night shift spinoff…

“You’d have to ask [the show’s creators]. I’m not sure. They’ve really done really a nice job in writing him, and I love playing him, so in whatever capacity they need him I’ll be there, including a night shift spinoff or, if they want to spend more time with the night shift during the day shift, that’s fine.”

On directing another episode of The Pitt for its forthcoming third season…

“I actually started directing Friday. Yeah, my first day of production. Number five.”

On his future beyond The Pitt…

“I’m still working at getting parts. Nothing’s handed over, and I’m OK with that. I like working. I like proving myself. I’m definitely having conversations with people that I probably wasn’t going to be having before. I just did a great show called Cry Wolf with Olivia Colman and Brie Larson — Sarah Treem is the showrunner, it’s a limited series for FX, and I’m very excited. And I don’t know that I would’ve been in the conversation if it weren’t for The Pitt.”

Frank Beard, the longtime drummer for ZZ Top, has died. He was 77.

A rep for the band confirmed the news on Tuesday. While he didn’t disclose a cause of death, the rep said Beard died in hospice care at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, “with family members at his side.”

“Today, Elwood and I lost a great friend and collaborator, and the world lost one of the most naturally innovative drummers and a great and true son of Texas,” Billy Gibbons wrote in an Instagram post.
“His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top.”

With Beard’s passing, Gibbons said the group would be canceling Tuesday night’s show in Sandy, Utah and Wednesday’s concert in Colorado Springs, and that they’d continue their tour this weekend with their date at Austin City Limits. The group referred to ACL as “one of Frank’s favorite venues and in a city that had been something of a second home for him.”

Beard’s death comes just weeks after ZZ Top suddenly canceled their show at The Hollywood Bowl, citing “unforeseen personnel matters.” Rolling Stone had subsequently reported that Beard’s health was the cause of the cancellation.

Beard isn’t technically a founder of ZZ Top (that’d be Dan Mitchell), though he joined the group in its infancy in 1969 and led its rhythm section for over five decades.

Born on June 11, 1949, in Frankston, Texas. Beard grew up in the nearby Texas city of Irving. He met future ZZ Top member Dusty Hill there, and in 1969, Beard suggested to Gibbons that Hill join the group.

“When I was about fifteen I started to play and then I discovered all the blues joints in Dallas where you could hear a lot of great players like Freddie King,” Beard told Backpages of his start.

Together, ZZ Top was one of the most iconic rock groups of their generation, both with their Texas blues-rock sound — which spawned platinum records like Eliminator and Afterburner — and their distinct bearded look. Beard, ironically, was the lone beardless member of the outfit.

“If we played a soul song or a country song, whatever song we played, it would sound like ZZ Top,” Beard previously told Kerrang!

Beard is survived by his wife Debbie and three children.

Ash and Crayons, a powerful documentary from Oscar-nominated documentarian Evgeny Afineevsky about Ukrainian children whose lives have been dramatically impacted by the ongoing war in Ukraine, has been acquired by Briarcliff Entertainment for a North American theatrical release on Nov. 20 — World Children’s Day — and robust impact and awards campaigns, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned.

Afineevsky, a Russian-born Israeli-American who has also made acclaimed docs about everything from the war in Syria (2017’s Cries from Syria) to the late Pope Francis (2020’s Francesco), has been a devoted chronicler of war in Ukraine for over a decade, dating back to 2015’s Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, for which he received his Oscar nomination, and its sequel, 2022’s Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.

Ash and Crayons combines verité footage and animation created by Ukrainian artists to tell the stories of seven Ukrainian children as they exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors, from catastrophic injuries to forcible deportations. An early cut of the film was recognized with the prestigious Cinema for Peace Award in Berlin, which was presented to Afineevsky by Hillary Clinton.

Briarcliff is run by veteran film exec Tom Ortenberg (Crash and Spotlight), who tells THR, “All of us at Briarcliff are proud to be associated with such a strong and affecting film, and we look forward to bringing it to audiences this fall.”

Adds Kevin Goetz, one of the film’s producers, “We are so thrilled to have partners in Tom and Briarcliff who share our commitment to bringing these powerful and inspiring stories to the world. Evgeny is one of the great documentarians of our time. This is a film about hope and resilience, about seeing beyond the ‘ash,’ so to speak.”

Afineevsky himself states, “I am so honored to share the inspirational stories of these incredible children. As they have said to us, ‘Even broken crayons can color.’ I’m also extremely grateful for the hard work of 100-plus Ukrainian artists and industry professionals inside war-torn Ukraine, support of the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine and the Ukrainian State Film Agency (Derzhikino), as well as the support and expertise of my producers, Kevin Goetz and Galyna Sadomtseva-Nabaranchuk.”

Bill Rasmussen set out to create a local sports channel in his home state of Connecticut. Instead, he changed the global television landscape.

Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) died following a lengthy illness on Tuesday. He was 93. When asked about the legacy of his long-ago boss, Bob Ley, SportsCenter‘s first full-time anchor, opened with a very recent anecdote to describe the last 47 years of sports media: “The Lakers wouldn’t be worth $12 billion rather for Bill Rasmussen,” Ley told The Hollywood Reporter.

Talk about a full-circle moment. Rasmussen was a pioneer of the satellite television delivery system when he launched ESPN in 1979 — it was just last week when the former CEO (twice!) of ESPN’s current parent company, Disney, purchased the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-shattering sum. (OK, so Bob Iger had some financial help.) It was Rasmussen and ESPN that brought the nation the “Showtime” Lakers, also born in ’79. There are very few coincidences. At the time, Iger was a low-level ABC Sports executive; Disney would not own ABC (much less ESPN) for another 16 years.

How early was Rasmussen’s big bet? ESPN went live nine months ahead of CNN, the first 24/7 news channel. Ted Turner was the Cable Cowboy, but Bill Rasmussen’s cart was before his horse.

On Sept. 7, 1979, ESPN went live with a total reach of 1.4 million U.S. homes. In 2010, the cable channel reached 111 million.

Ultimately, Rasmussen would not be with his baby all that long — he’d leave ESPN in 1980 — but boy did he bring it into this world through some serious labor. Rasmussen literally carried the earliest days of ESPN on his personal credits cards — fortunately, he was such a charmer that ESPN went from Rasmussen’s Visa to literal oil money.

Ley describes Rasmussen as “an ebullient guy,” a “positive thinker,” and a “salesman” who “owned the room.” It was Rasmussen’s idea that intrigued Getty Oil; his personality secured its crucial investment.

“He stood that company up,” Ley, who very much also stood the company up, said. Rasmussen “blew air into it like a campfire.”

Rasmussen, who would return to his entrepreneurial roots, lived the American Dream when there still was one. So it is fitting that in 2010, the lone flagpole on ESPN’s sprawling Bristol, Connecticut campus that flies the American flag was dedicated to its founder, which Rasmussen was “so, so proud of,” Ley said.

ESPN today does not look much like the ESPN of Rasmussen’s day. Hell, it barely resembles the ESPN of Ley’s day (Ley retired in 2019, the same year Rasmussen revealed a Parkinson’s Disease diagnosis). Today, satellite television barely exists — even cable is antiquated. You cannot stop progress, and the result is a $29.99-per-month ESPN streaming app. (Some might not call that “progress.”)

But look closely enough and you can still see Rasmussen’s fingerprints on all of it.

“His concept was an acorn, and now the forest of the sports culture is the flower of that,” Ley said.

When Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer said they wanted the fifth and final season of the Netflix sci-fi drama to be a “mega movie,” the VFX team knew they would have their work cut out for them.

The coming-of-age series requires “way more shots than are normally done on a two-hour feature,” VFX supervisor Betsy Paterson tells THR, noting that the show’s overall budget was expanded for the final season. This allowed the crew to execute an epic conclusion to the series’ decade-long run that saw the beloved Hawkins gang unite for a final showdown to take down Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). 

However, before the VFX team could tackle the monsters, they had to make the otherworldly dimensions that the series is known for seem realistic. The team relied heavily on practical effects, which were later punched up with visual effects. Paterson notes it’s important to the Duffer brothers to have sets that feel as tactile as possible, so “no matter how crazy this stuff gets, you are really seeing it from the perspective of these kids who are in the real world,” she says. “We’re always building things for the actors to interact with.”

Two examples are the wall in the interdimensional wormhole known as the Upside Down that serves as a portal between Earth and the alternate realm of the Abyss, and the liquefying room inside the Hawkins National Lab where Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are trapped. 

“We built a big chunk of that membrane wall for Hopper [David Harbour] and Eleven [Millie Bobby Brown] to climb on,” Paterson explains. “The goo in the melting room was real goo wherever it touches anything or the actors.” 

When it came to the Upside Down, the VFX team fortunately already had an established look from the previous four seasons to build upon. They couldn’t say the same about the Abyss, aka Dimension X, however, which was introduced in the final season and had to be designed from scratch.

“There was some talk about possibly filming it in the real desert,” Paterson says of the new alternate world. “In the end, the production logistics were too much, but that gave us a base of a look for it. We scanned and took as many reference photos as we could so that the rocks and the geography looked like a real place and not just a kind of mystery CG world.”

As fans know, no world in Stranger Things is ever void, as there are always monsters lurking nearby, namely Vecna. While the resident villain’s appearance in season five led to social media jokes about him being on Ozempic, Paterson clarifies that Vecna’s slimmer physique has to do with how he rebuilt himself after almost being destroyed by Eleven in season four.

Unlike previous seasons in which Bower wore full practical prosthetics, this time around the team relied more heavily on digital effects to accomplish his new look. “He is now much more monster than human, and he has caused that to happen. He created himself, really. So that’s what we’re seeing with all the vines and the way they move — you can see the blood going through them,” Paterson explains. “It’s an immediate signifier of how much more powerful he is now.”

That power was fully shown when it was revealed that Vecna was working as one entity with another massive monster, the Mind Flayer, whose scale was fully witnessed in the final battle against Eleven and the Hawkins gang.

“They wanted him as big as we could possibly get, but at a certain point you can’t film it. And it’s just so ridiculous that he would even notice the kids, much less get defeated by them,” Paterson notes of the cosmic CGI creature. “We went back and forth on that quite a bit and, after lots of motion tests and animation tests by Weta FX, we ended up where we landed with the size.”

Looking at the season as a whole, it’s easy to assume all the monsters and alternate worlds would be the most difficult to pull off. But for Paterson, the most challenging scene was the opening sequence with a young Will Byers, played by Noah Schnapp, who was only 11 years old when Stranger Things debuted in 2016.

“I felt so much pressure in that scene because we all know what he looked like,” Paterson admits. “He’s not in season one that much because he gets kidnapped, so we didn’t have a huge library of footage of him at that age. Weta was able to take every bit that we could find: outtakes, every press photograph, walking on the red carpet. They used all of it to build a young Will that looked like Noah.” 

With the help of Schnapp
and Luke Kokotek, a young stand-in actor, the VFX team was able to replace Kokotek’s face so he would appear as season one Will.

The scene serves as an emblem of the show’s 10-year journey. And with everything coming to a literal end in season five as the Upside Down — which has been a central part of the show throughout its run — gets destroyed behind Eleven in the finale, the VFX team had to leave audiences with a memorable last impression.

“When you see Hawkins High being destroyed and the Wheeler house, normally we try not to put too much detail into shots that are only going to be seen once, but it was worth it for that scene,” Paterson says. “It was a lot of fun going frame by frame and spotting all the little stuff that they built just to have it be destroyed.” 

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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.”