‘Fast and Furious’ prequels in the works

Vin Diesel says storylines for various characters ready to roll

The Fast and Furious franchise may take a page from the book of Star Wars and Marvel. Producer and actor Vin Diesel said work on prequels and spinoffs of the fast cars and crime series is in preliminary stages, reported entertainment website Variety.

“We’ve written out storylines for various characters,” said Diesel. “We’ve been playing with it for a long time. It’s a very rich property and we’re committed to treating it with a lot of class.” The actor did not say which characters would get their own standalone films, but in the past, Dwayne Johnson has hinted that he’d like to see his character, Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs, branch out into independent adventures.



If the actors are game for some universe building, it sounds like the studio is willing to back the projects. Universal Pictures Chairman Donna Langley confirmed that talks are taking place about ways to broaden the series’ reach. “We’re certainly in conversations about how we can expand the franchise now,” said Langley. “It’s an ensemble cast and there’s room to bring characters in and out.”

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If Universal does go forward with launching spinoffs and prequels, it will be aping a strategy successfully employed by the Avengers series and one being embraced by Star Wars which is augmenting a new trilogy with origin stories focused on Han Solo and others.

For now, however, the focus remains on creating three more Fast and Furious sequels. Diesel and Universal brass promise that the upcoming films will be different in tone from the adventures that preceded them. That’s why the studio brought in F Gary Gray, the director of Straight Outta Compton to guide the eighth film in the series. “We have a director who is going to bring the darkness out and bring out the character,” said Diesel, who promises that the film will be similar to his previous collaboration with the director, the gritty 2003 thriller A Man Apart.



The Fast and Furious films are known for their gravity-defying car races, but the studio wants to shift the emphasis in the next installment. “You can’t keep having every movie have bigger and bigger stunts forever and ever and ever,” said Jeff Shell, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group. “Eventually you have to really focus on the story. We’ll still have big stunts but bringing in this amazing storyteller is going to be great.”

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For his part, Gray said the series will be a departure from the rap epic he just finished making. “I’m a fan of cars and after being on Straight Outta Compton for four years, it was time to have some fun,” Gray said.

Shell admitted that nothing lasts forever, but he believed that after more than a decade of movies, the success of the most recent chapter, Furious 7, indicates that the series’ audience is still growing. Furious 7 was the first film in the series to top $1 billion and benefitted from growth in foreign markets like China, where it made over $390 million.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2015.

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