Great news for fans of the Fast and Furious franchise – that definitely includes us at FTN for record – as star Vin Diesel made a pretty big announcement on his Facebook page (see video below).
The franchise has kind of been in turmoil over the last while as conflict seemed to be dominating among the stars, especially between Diesel and star Dwayne Johnston (here) who has been confirmed as going out on his own in a spinoff with Jason Statham based on their characters Hobbs and Deckard from the franchise (here) with talks of Shane Black coming on board to direct.
While we’ll never know for sure, this seemed to fracture the ‘family’ of Fast & Furious, however Diesel has just delivered a great bit of news for long-standing fans of the franchise: director Justing Lin is back, not just for the ninth movie but for the ninth AND tenth instalments.
Lin took over the franchise with the third instalment, Tokyo Drift, and then made four, five and six, taking the franchise from a mediocre series about cars and girls in bikinis, to a pretty much unmissable action movie saga.
This news is not entirely unprecedented as in May 2016 it was reported that Diesel had persuaded Lin to make Fast 10 (the supposed last movie in the franchise) (here)
On top of this, Diesel also announced that actress Jordanna Brewster will be returning too.
Brewster played Vin Diesel’s character’s Dominic Toretto’s sister, Mia. However, with the tragic death of star Paul Walker in November 2013, her character’s future in the series seemed to be finished as she and Walker’s character, Brian O’Connor, were married with children and both were given a ‘happy ending’ in the seventh movie, effectively writing them out of the franchise to leave for a life of contend happiness with their new family. This was done using CGI and Walker’s brothers playing him in order to finish his story (here).
Interestingly in September 2016 one of Walker’s brothers, Caleb, hinted that O’Connor may be set to appear in the movies again (here) thanks to the sort of movie magic that they used to finish his story in Fast 7.
So could we see Walker and Brewster return? Well… we’re not ruling it out.
Either way, despite our fears only weeks ago, it looks like the Fast franchise is in good shape.
Ride or die.
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
Nerd Comments