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The Rock’s Fast and Furious role was written for Tommy Lee Jones

If you're going to catch someone as fast and furious as Dom Toretto you're going to need someone pretty tough but the role of Hobbs nearly didn't go to the Rock

Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive

If you’re going to catch someone as fast and as furious as Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), you’re going to need someone pretty tough. It makes sense then that Dwayne Johnson, a literal moving mountain of muscle, was chosen to play Luke Hobbs in the Fast and Furious movies.

Curiously though when the Fast and Furious character of Hobbs was first created, the person they had in mind for the role wasn’t a musclebound slab of beef. No, they wrote the role for veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones.

“Back in the fifth film, when I was asking ‘Who should I work with?’ The reason why we brought Dwayne Johnson into Fast Five was because of [Jen Kelly],” Diesel explained in a video celebrating Fast 8 wrapping. “There was a girl named Jen Kelly who said, ‘I would love to see [Johnson and Diesel] guys work together onscreen’ and so we gave a role, that was initially written for Tommy Lee Jones, but we gave it to Dwayne, and he shined in it.”

It makes sense why Diesel would want Jones for the role. The actor’s no stranger to hunting wanted men appearing as the tenacious Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard in The Fugitive. That thriller movie saw Gerard hunting Harrison Ford’s Dr Richard Kimble, who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit.

While the main difference between Dom and Dr Kimble is that Toretto actually did commit the crimes, he’s accused of. But he did do them for the right reasons, which has to count for something, right? Anyway, we think Johnson’s addition to the Fast and Furious cast was a masterstroke.

The wrestler turned megastar helped establish the Fast and Furious series as one of the biggest action movie franchises in the world. Now we know Diesel and Johnson have had a falling out, but we’d love to see Hobbs return for the final two films in the Fast Saga.

If you want to know more about the Fast 10 release date, then check out our guide.