The Fast & Furious franchise has certainly grown in scope and tone since it began in 2001, but one moment stretched the bounds of the franchise’s believeability so much that even a top Universal executive admits it was a mistake. The Fast & Furious is one of Universal Pictures’ biggest brands, with the ten films and the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw having grossed a combined total of $7.4 billion. The series is seemingly set to conclude with the long-awaited and delayed Fast & Furious 11. Part of the delay is attributed to how Fast X underperformed at the box office, a trend that may be traced back to a controversial moment in F9.
Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) via Variety, NBCUniversal Studio Group and Chief Content Officer, Donna Langley, mentioned her one big regret for the Fast & Furious franchise was the rocket car going to the International Space Station in F9. “I’m sorry that we sent them into space. We can never get that genie back,” said Langley in a discussion with TIFF’s festival director, Cameron Bailey. However, she did say the decision to send the team to space in F9 was rooted in the franchise’s long-running tradition to adapt and evolve over the years, and cited star Vin Diesel’s engagement with the fan community to help influence what direction to take the series, including bringing back Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty. Langely said:
“We knew that we had to figure out how to grow it. We made a conscious decision to pivot to a sort of a globe-trotting heist scenario. Vin was an early adopter of talking to his fans directly. As we saw that growing, and we saw where the conversation was going. We’ve always been very fan first on the ‘Fast’ franchise. [People would] sort of throw out little things about, ‘Oh God, don’t kill Letty’ OK, we’ll bring her back. ‘She never died. Don’t worry. Nothing to see here.’ But that’s all led by fan engagement.”
What is Too Far For ‘Fast & Furious’
The controversial scene from F9 sees Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Ted (Ludacris) fly a rocket car into space to destroy a satellite containing the weapon of mass destruction, Project Ares. The scene concludes with the duo being rescued from being stranded by a Chinese satellite, which comments on how their yellow space suit looks like Minions, another Universal property. Even though the Fast & Furious franchise had plenty of ridiculous moments, with F9 also retconning a major death by bringing Han back, it was the rocket car that was a stretch too far.
Yet if much of the creative decision for the film is informed by Vin Diesel engaging with the fans, it is clear why F9 took the team to space. As the franchise got more over the top with each entry, including resurrections, amnesia subplots, and even throwing a missile across the ice in The Fate of the Furious, a common joke among fans was that the series was getting so ridiculous that Dom and his team of former street racers turned criminals turned superspies would go to space. What was once a joke for many, that nobody really wanted, became a serious element of the franchise, revealing that some individuals were unable to distinguish between what was a joke and what fans actually wanted to see.
Fast X also brought things to an extreme, and it seems that after so many over-the-top moments, the series was losing some of its audience. Even with $714 million worldwide, the film underperformed at the box office compared to the five films that preceded it, and domestically, it was the lowest-grossing film in the franchise since the series pivoted following Tokyo Drift. This has seemingly been one of the many factors holding up Fast and Furious 11, which was originally set to open in 2025. The movie appears to have undergone multiple changes behind the scenes, with Vin Diesel hinting that it would return to the grounded roots of the first film. The movie is projected to hit theaters in 2027, leaving a four-year gap to resolve the cliffhanger at the end of Fast X, if indeed it is resolved.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
