Veteran Fast and Furious director Justin Lin has spoken about his grand plans for the final chapter in the world’s quick and grumpy action movie series. Speaking to Insider, Lin explained he’s been thinking about the ‘Fast finale’ for years now and revealed he had conversations with the late Paul Walker about how it should end.
“Even with Paul, back in 2008,” Lin said. “I think it was over dinner, I think it was over dinner in Mexico, he had brought up,” ‘Well, what would be the final film?’ And, we would talk.” Entirely what they spoke about Lin didn’t reveal, but he did share a joke about a hypothetical “Fast 68”.
“At one point, we were gonna make a short film, and it was going to be a comedy,” Lin joked. “It was gonna be Fast 68, and it was going to be Brian O’Connor with the walker. It was this whole joke. We had the whole thing.” Now though, with filming set to begin next year on the last two Fast films, Lin is slightly more sombre, wanting to do the series “justice” for Walker, who died in 2013.
“I think when Vin finally… said, ‘Let’s do it,’ I felt like, ‘Wow.’ There’s an added layer to that because this conversation has been, oh, it’s been over 10 years,” he said. “And, when we started, Paul was a big part of that conversation and so I really wanted to hopefully do justice to that.”
Fast leading man Vin Diesel has previously spoken about wanting fast 10 to be the biggest movie ever made. Unfortunately, his plans for the film have already run into one significant snag, Dwayne Johnson refuses to return as Hobbs.
Diesel had previously made an impassioned, if slightly bizarre, plea to Johnson asking him to return to the series, but it’s fallen on deaf ears. Johnson recently told CNN there’s no chance of him returning to Fast and Furious going so far as to describe Diesel’s behaviour as manipulative.
“I was very surprised by Vin’s recent post. Vin’s recent public post was an example of his manipulation,” he said. “I didn’t like that he brought up his children in the post, as well as Paul Walker’s death. Leave them out of it. We had spoken months ago about this and came to a clear understanding. My goal all along was to end my amazing journey with this incredible Fast & Furious franchise with gratitude and grace. It’s unfortunate that this public dialogue has muddied the waters.”
Johnson and Diesel’s feud became public after the pair fell out on the set of The Fate of the Furious. Since then Johnson and Diesel have spent the intervening years intermittently trading barbs.
Fast and Furious 10 is scheduled for release on May 19, 2023.