But 15 years ago, as franchise lore goes, the fateful highway that carried Justin Lin and Sung Kang to their destiny after making the third film led to …
At its best, Hollywood’s most malleable blockbuster property has proved the value of outsized imagination, the ability to swerve and an understanding of what makes #family more than just a buzzword.
“Good filmmaking is having the ability to pivot because that’s the true nature of making movies,” says Diesel.
Twenty years after introducing Dom Toretto to audiences, Diesel has taken the character through many stoic iterations of what familia and modern machismo mean.
Back to the spirit of 10-second cars and tuna sandwiches, and headlong into the biblical terrain of tortured brotherhood — all while keeping an eye on the horizon.
In 2013, having spent over half his career making the franchise, he departed after helping build the third, fourth, fifth and sixth installments into one of the highest-grossing original film franchises in Hollywood .
What he hadn’t done in his break from the “Fast” movies was watch the last two sequels, both written by franchise veteran Chris Morgan: “Furious 7,” directed by James Wan, whose installment was heavily affected by the tragic death of cast member Walker, and “Fate,” directed by F.
Lin had gotten Statham to appear in a “Fast 6″ credits cameo that rewrote the end of “Tokyo Drift,” revealing it was Shaw who’d killed Han all along and bringing the timeline up to speed.
The idea that Lin had for “F9″ revolved around a source of conflict that the films about the chosen Toretto clan hadn’t yet mined: family, but make it blood.
“I fought really hard for the action piece,” says Brewster, who took up tae kwon do and started sending Lin training videos to pitch herself in action.
“Since the beginning, Michelle has always been the one to say, ‘I am not playing her this way.
With the emotional bones of the story in place, he scripted on laptops and yellow pads while scouting all over the world before production filmed in 2019 in London, Edinburgh, Thailand, Tbilisi and Los Angeles.
They listened to fan sentiment around the franchise’s twists, turns and big leaps — and wove a sense of incredulity over the Toretto family exploits into Gibson’s character, Roman, who in “F9″ expresses the first glimmer of self-awareness seen thus far in the franchise.
But a crucial piece of the puzzle was, for a time, undetermined: the return of Kang as Han, whose plot-driving death had been depicted not once, not twice, but three times in the films .
Ever since “Tokyo Drift,” Kang had been embraced by “Fast” fans and car enthusiasts everywhere he went.
Like the late Walker, Kang had fallen in love with car culture thanks to the films, and during the pandemic, he launched his podcast “Sung’s Garage,” connecting with the auto community.
Han’s resurrection is indeed explained in the film, and Kang doesn’t take the return for granted.
Diesel thinks back to when he didn’t feel as free to play in Dom’s sandbox.
“I didn’t know that ultimately that the studio would allow me to produce the franchise in a more episodic fashion,” Diesel says.
It was a meeting with Lin, facilitated by then-Universal exec Jeff Kirschenbaum to entice Diesel into a “Tokyo Drift” cameo, that helped bring the star back into the “Fast” fold, spitballing potential character arcs and squad history for hours.
Then, bending the timeline to bring the popular Han back, prequel “Fast & Furious” united what would become its core cast around Diesel, folding in characters from the previous films and adding new ones.
The studio worried that fans would be confused by the time jump, but audiences rolled with it.
“F9″ is already the biggest Hollywood opening of the pandemic era, poised to hit U.S.
“Some people say ‘Justice for Gisele,’” Lin says, referring to Gal Gadot’s character, who definitively perished in the sixth film before the actress was cast as Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman.