In 2000, actor Paul Walker had worked with director Rob Cohen on The Skulls. Cohen secured a deal with producer Neal H. Moritz for an untitled action film for Universal Pictures, and approached Walker and asked him to suggest his "dream" action film; Walker suggested a mash-up of the films Days of Thunder and Donnie Brasco . Upon hearing this, Walker signed on immediately; finding his co-star proved difficult. The studio warmed toward the idea of Timothy Olyphant in the role of Dominic Toretto, due to the success of the blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds , but he declined.
Moritz persisted on Vin Diesel following his performance in Pitch Black , with Diesel accepting after proposing several script changes. Moritz had difficulty choosing between the titles Racer X, Redline, Race Wars and Street Wars, but was ultimately inspired by a documentary on American International Pictures, which included the 1954 film The Fast and the Furious. Moritz was traded use of some stock footage to its director, Roger Corman, in exchange for a license to use the title.
Upon release in June 2001, the film shattered box office expectations and a 2002 sequel was green-lit by September. While developing the film, Universal completely departed from any street racing elements prevalent in previous films, to transform the franchise into a heist action series involving cars. By doing so, they hoped to attract wider audiences that might otherwise be put off by a heavy emphasis on cars and car culture. Fast Five is considered the transitional film in the series, featuring only one car race and giving more attention to action set pieces such as gun fights, brawls and the heist.
Fast Five was initially conceived to conclude the franchise, but following strong box office performance and high critical praise, Universal proceeded to develop a sixth installment. Furthermore, the film is noted for the addition of Dwayne Johnson to the cast, whose performance was critically praised. The climactic vault heist required four weeks of preparation with every scene and camera angle determined in advance. The filmmakers hired stunt director Spiro Razatos and stunt coordinator Jack Gill to direct the second-unit action filming. The pair initially began research for the stunt by testing the capabilities of the prop vaults and the Dodge Chargers driven by Diesel and Walker.
Filmed on the streets of Hato Rey, the chaotic scene demanded specific timing that had to be synchronized with the various character interactions also occurring during the scene. The Subaru's driver Allen Padelford would occasionally accidentally collide with the vault, creating a shower of sparks that inadvertently became useful footage. Padelford also developed a top-mount dual-drive system for the Chargers that allowed a stunt driver to control the vehicle from the roof, while the actor focused on their performance inside the car. The toll of multiple re-shoots dissuaded Wan from returning to the franchise and Universal hired F.
This film was to begin a new trilogy, which will conclude the franchise. Diesel announced that introducing Kurt Russell and Charlize Theron as characters in Furious 7 would help to reach this. The film was released in 2017 and received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom praised the performances and action sequences, but criticized the storyline and the long running time.
It was an unabashed commercial success, grossing over $1.2 billion worldwide. Universal later announced that final two films will be released in May 2020 and April 2021, with Lin returning to direct. It was announced that Brewster would reprise her role as Mia Toretto, while screenwriter Daniel Casey was hired for the ninth film; F9 is the first film since Tokyo Drift not to be written by Morgan.
Pre-production began in February 2019 in London, and filming began in June and concluded in November. John Cena was cast as the film's villain, portraying Jakob Toretto, Dom's brother. Moreover, Sung Kang returned as Han, while the film is the first to star Helen Mirren and saw Lucas Black reprise his role as Sean Boswell from Tokyo Drift.
F9 was originally scheduled to be theatrically released on May 22, 2020, but was pushed back a year to April 2, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was then pushed back to May 28, 2021, and finally released in the United States on June 25. Universal lacked a major event film for 2014 and rushed Furious 7 into pre-production in mid-2013 due to its status as a bankable asset. Lin decided not to return to direct the seventh film, as he was still performing post-production on Fast & Furious 6. James Wan, primarily known for horror films, took over directorial duties.
On November 30, 2013, Walker died in a single-vehicle crash, with filming only half-completed. Following Walker's death, filming was delayed for script rewrites and his brothers, Caleb and Cody, were used as stand-ins to complete his remaining scenes. The script rewrites completed the story arcs of both Walker and Brewster's characters. Visual effects company Weta Digital was hired to re-create Walker's likeness. Ultimately, the film's delays saw it being released in April 2015, where it became the highest-grossing film in the franchise, grossing $1.5 billion.
It was also the most critically successful, with praise being aimed at the film's action sequences and its emotional tribute to Walker. Universal attempted to bring back Diesel for the third installment, but he again declined due to other projects and a dislike for the script. After failing to secure the returns of Walker or any other member of the original cast, Universal ordered a reboot of the franchise. It is the first film in the series to start its tradition of filming in locations outside the United States. Moritz returned and hired director Justin Lin, having been impressed with Lin's work for the film Better Luck Tomorrow , which shared similar elements with Tokyo Drift.
Moreover, the series were able to bring Diesel in for a cameo appearance, in exchange for letting the actor's production company acquire the rights to the Riddick character. The third film was the least financially successful of the franchise, received lukewarm reception and left the future of the franchise in limbo. The Fast & Furious franchise traces its humble beginnings back to Rob Cohen's The Fast and The Furious in 2001.
The film played with the Point Break formula and introduced LAPD cop, Brian O'Conner , and hardened street thug, Dominic Toretto , as two race car drivers who eventually become partners. From there, the series gradually became increasingly bombastic and grandiose with each passing installment, delivering more action and continuously highlighting the importance of family among its ever-growing cast. After 9 films and a massive overall box office haul, the FastSagais poised to finally cap things off with two films, debuting in 2023 and 2024. While developing Fast Five, Universal Studios deliberately departed from the street racing theme prevalent in previous films in the series, to transform the franchise into a heist action series involving cars.
Fast Five is considered the transitional film in the series, featuring only one car race and giving more attention to action set pieces such as brawls, gun fights, and the central heist. The production mounted a comprehensive marketing campaign, with the film being advertised through social media, virtual games, cinema chains, automobile manufacturers, and at NASCAR races. Away from the franchise, Diesel made a string of box office or critical flops, including The Chronicles of Riddick , The Pacifier and Find Me Guilty . After discussions with Universal, the pair shared an interest in reviving the series. After signing Diesel and confirming the return of Lin, Universal worked to track the first film's original co-stars and re-signed Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster in mid-2008. Walker was initially reluctant to rejoin the franchise after six years, but Diesel assured him that film would be considered the first "true" sequel.
Morgan returned to write after the critical praise for the character Han Lue. Given the apparent death of the character in the third film, the timeline of the franchise was altered to account for his appearance. With the emphasis on car culture toned down, the fourth film, Fast & Furious, was a commercial success.
Although critical reception was mixed, it reinvigorated the franchise, as well as the star power of Diesel and Walker. Of course, the other familial bond that the film can't help but address is the continued absence of franchise starPaul Walker, who died in 2013. Brian and Mia are referenced in The Fate of the Furious, but not seen onscreen, however, with F9's focus on the Toretto family, it was time to bring Brewster back into the fold, despite the fact that Walker couldn't be by her side. The rooftop chase across favelas was filmed in Puerto Rico, where the production could have more control over the area. The main and second filming units began filming in and around the capital, San Juan.
The island's mixture of tropical greenery and wide streets allowed the production to re-create the densely populated favelas of Rio while completing the larger action and external scenes without incident. Production designer Peter Wenham had the task of transforming Puerto Rico and Atlanta into the previously scouted Rio locations in four weeks, as the production deemed Rio unsuitable for filming many of the larger scenes. Wenham had to reinforce buildings to support the heavy camera equipment, and to alter the colors of more than 30 buildings in the city to make them suitable for filming. His team needed to alter the buildings and strew debris to make the area look disheveled and appear as a Rio favela. Wenham remarked that, though the development was difficult, in part due to the heat, it was "a walk in the park" compared with filming in the Rio favelas themselves.
Wenham aimed to maintain a monochromatic color scheme for the film, with muted blacks and grays, including his choice of colors for the cars used. He only chose to add a multitude of colors in the favela set. The Teodoro Moscosco bridge connecting San Juan to neighboring Isla Verde was used to film the final showdown between Dom and Reyes, while a U.S. Navy base pier 60 miles outside San Juan stood in for the bridge for scenes involving the vault smashing cars. Action scenes were also filmed in the Hato Rey and Río Piedras districts of San Juan.
By February 3, 2010, it was confirmed that a fifth film, referred to as Fast Five, was going into production in the Fast and Furious series, and that a sixth film was being planned. It was also confirmed that Diesel, Walker, writer Chris Morgan and producer Neal H. Moritz would all return to their roles for the new installment. Moritz said that, following the success of Fast & Furious , which had reunited Diesel, Brewster, Walker and Rodriguez from the original film, the production wanted to bring them back again for the next one. Diesel felt that the story between the characters portrayed by himself and Walker should continue, envisioning it as three chapters, of which Fast Five would be the last. Diesel also wanted to bring back a variety of characters that had been in previous films without interacting, put them together and "have a lot of fun".
From the opening shot to the fan-pleasing post-credits scene, F9 is packed with all the over-the-top stunts, muscular emoting and general balls-to-the-wall ridiculousness you expect from the Fast and Furious franchise, and Hollywood in general. Look, cinema is a medium that can intensify the most exquisite emotion, or it's a medium where a supercar can turbo-boost off a cliff and be caught by a fighter plane. There's also a chance he might be playing the secret mastermind behind the entire thing. I suspect Charlize Theron's villainous computer hacker Cipher probably reports to someone, so what if Stiller is that person? He might even be the director of Eteon, the terrorist organization at the center of Hobbs and Shaw. Whether you're a die-hard Fast & Furious fan or you just really love Vin Diesel, there's no denying that The Fast and the Furious franchise has delivered quality action films for the past two decades.
The chemistry between the characters makes the series compelling, but there's an unexpected sense of heart that may be from the real-life bonds made over the years. (The heartwarming sentiments after Paul Walker's death and the reappearance of former cast members in sequel after sequel speak to that.) But just how far have they come from their first Fast and Furious film? We're tracking down the original cast members and our favorites throughout the series for a look at The Fast and the Furious stars, then and now. Wenham and his team transformed a defunct train yard into an abandoned auto plant used by the protagonists as their headquarters. It was required to allow enough space for stunt drivers to drive into the building, and it had to include an integrated lighting system.
The design team removed walls, hauled out old railway cars, suspended rusted car parts and auto-plant car rails, and constructed smaller buildings within the main building to transform the site. An exterior scene involving Diesel and Walker attending a car party, involving several high-performance cars, was filmed near the Georgia Dome. The train heist scene was filmed in Rice, California over three weeks. Lin revealed that he had, after discussions with Diesel, storyboarded, previsualized and began editing a twelve-minute finale for Fast & Furious 6, before filming was completed on Fast Five. Upon release, the sixth film became the highest-grossing film in the series. Diesel declined to return for the sequel, saying that the screenplay was inferior to its predecessor.
Cohen also declined the sequel, opting to develop the film xXx , which starred Diesel in the lead role. To account for these changes, Universal commissioned the writers to create a standalone sequel with Walker in the lead and brought in John Singleton as the new director. Filming was delayed by a year and the production location shifted to Miami. Tyrese Gibson, who worked with Singleton on the film Baby Boy , was hired as Walker's new co-star and was the first entry in the series to feature long-running cast member Ludacris. Fast & Furious is a media franchise centered on a series of action films that are largely concerned with illegal street racing, heists, spies and family.
The franchise also includes short films, a television series, live shows, video games and theme park attractions. When series star Vin Diesel is asked if his character Dominic Toretto, the intrepid heist-master, or any member of his crew would ever drive an eco-conscious electric car, the American actor pauses to think. Even though the Fast and Furious franchise has become a blockbuster series over the years, it took a few films for it to find its footing and figure out what it wanted to be. Most of the main players have stuck with it in over the long haul, but the core group didn't come together overnight. In fact, in 2017,a producer revealed that Timothy Olyphant was initially targeted to star in the first film. John Cena told earlier that he is ready to reprise his role of Jakob for another Fast and Furious movie if the audience enjoys watching F9.
Cena plays Jakob, the estranged younger brother of Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto, in the Justin Lin-directed movie. In an interview with Insider, the actor was asked whether he would like to return for the franchise's tenth chapter. The studio worried that fans would be confused by the time jump, but audiences rolled with it. Shortly after the premiere of The Fast and the Furious 6, Paul Walker was tragically killed in a car accident. The actor, who was in the midst of filming Furious 7, posthumously appeared in the film. There's even a subtle nod at the end of F9 that the O'Connor character might return in future iterations.
The action star, who portrays street car racer Dominic Toretto and has served as a producer since the fourth installment in the franchise, has welcomed three children in the years since the film's 2001 premiere. Of course, fans will have to wait and see what the future looks like for the Fast & Furious franchise after Fast & Furious 11 brings the main story to a close. Regardless of whether that's more Hobbs & Shaw films, villain-focused spinoffs like the Cipher film reportedly in development, or smaller stories told in a streaming landscape, it's clear that Lin wants to have a hand in whatever comes next for the series. F9 is currently available on Digital and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on September 21. Obviously, Dom was on a pretty dark journey on the film, but at the same time, it was like two creatures that had very similar energy that we wanted to capture. Browse 122 fast and furious cast stock photos and images available or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images.
The Letty Ortiz character wasn't written as a leading role, but once Rodriguez joined the cast to play her, Cohen carved out more screen time for the breakout actress. He did this by developing a love story between Letty and Dom . A foot pursuit in which Diesel, Brewster and Walker are chased across favela rooftops by Johnson and his team was filmed over the course of a week in the small hillside town of Naranjito, Puerto Rico. The scene was considered difficult to shoot, as pathways were slippery from moist tropical heat and the scene involved actors and stunt doubles running while avoiding dogs, chickens and other stray animals loose in the area.
To capture the scene, a 420-foot cable-camera rig was used to allow for a fast moving, birds-eye view of the action, and cameras on cranes were set up on rooftops and in alleyways. Walker and Brewster made multiple takes of the conclusion of the scene, requiring them to jump nearly 30 feet from a building onto a waiting safety mat. In total the production employed 236 technicians, 13,145 extras, and generated 16,824 room nights at hotels, contributing $27 million to the Puerto Rican community. Lin wanted to explore the elements of "freedom and family" in the film and collaborated with Morgan towards that ideal, both having worked together on previous installments of the franchise.
Morgan worked with Diesel to produce a story arc that would further explore and develop Diesel's character. An idea involving heisting a large safe had been conceived by Morgan during the production of Fast & Furious, but that film's premise did not work with how Morgan envisioned it. His time wrestling under the auspices of the World Wrestling Entertainment company had been spent in character as the nice guy. This has carried over to his film and television roles, where he mostly played genial characters, such as in the family comedies Playing With Fire and Blockers . It's a cliche at this point to boggle at how far these ridiculous action sequences have drifted from the relatively grounded first film -- which was inspired by a true story! But F9 highlights that distance by introducing a prequel element showing the origin story of the Toretto family.
Yup, this is the Godfather II of the Fast and Furious movies. This constant cartoon nonsense is undoubtedly pretty wearing, but with so many people in the cast, there's space to pump the brakes and just hang out with the familiar familia for a spell. Apparently, when The Fast and the Furious was originally pitched to Universal, the studio agreed to produce the film as long as Olyphant was cast as the lead role of Dom Toretto. Olyphant turned the role down, which brought the filmmakers to their backup, Vin Diesel. Diesel took the reins of the franchise and has appeared in almost every film since.
