Vin Diesel has asked the Fast and Furious writers room to get cracking on a new spin-off featuring Cipher (Charlize Theron). Theron revealed the news while talking to Variety, explaining that Diesel wants Theron’s cyber-terrorist to be the focus of her very own solo action movie. Unfortunately, she couldn’t offer and more details on the project other than that.
Cipher first appeared as the villain in The Fate of the Furious, the eighth film in the Fast and Furious timeline. In that movie, she blackmailed Dom (Vin Diesel) to turn against his beloved family by holding his son hostage. Unfortunately for the master hacker, Dom managed to outsmart her with a bit of help from the Shaw brothers, and she was forced to flee.
In Fast 9, it was revealed Mr Nobody (Kurt Russell) had caught her, but a convenient plan crash meant she wasn’t in custody for long. Once freed, she managed to ingratiate herself with the movie’s bad guy Otto and soon, the criminal mastermind was after Dom and the Fast Family once again.
Normally we’d baulk at the suggestion of giving a villain their own movie, but the Fast Franchise actually has decent form when it comes to redeeming old foes. They rehabilitated Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) after he tried to murder Han (Sung Kang), and even Jakob (John Cena) in Fast 9 looks like he’ll be back on the side of angels in any future Fast and Furious films.
Fast and the Furious 9 has been a monster hit since it opened, taking over the US box office with an estimated $70 million debut, giving it the biggest opening of any movie in the pandemic era. With the main series drawing to a close in just two movies, its box-office success makes it obvious why Universal are interested in exploring potential spin-off movies.
It’s early days for the Cipher spin-off, but if it manages to move beyond development, Theron will be very busy over the next few years. She recently revealed that the script for The Old Guard 2 was finished and that filming was expected to begin in 2022. While Theron didn’t share any plot details, she did say that Joe and Nicky were “definitely” returning.
Fast and Furious 9 is in theatres now.