While he didn’t create the franchise, most fans consider Justin Lin the reason why Fast and Furious became so massive. His four-film run, from parts three through six, took a seemingly unfocused story and gave it the cohesion and scope it craved. Billions of dollars later, Lin stepped away for two installments. He returned for the ninth one and was all set to close the franchise on a high note with a two-part finale.
But then, days into production on what would become Fast X, Lin departed the film. Trades cited “creative differences.” Rumors swirled everywhere. Eventually, director Louis Leterrier came on and did his best, but ultimately the film didn’t live up to expectations. Now it’s been over two years, and a sequel to that film feels less likely than ever, which keeps raising the question of what happened.
Welcome to the Family: The Explosive Story Behind Fast & Furious, by Barry Hertz, may hold the answers. It’s a new book coming out on November 25, and IndieWire has an excerpt. It’s a look into the reasons why Lin left, and it seems like “creative differences” is putting it mildly.
You can, and should, read the whole excerpt here. But to summarize some of the juiciest gossip, the ending Lin was working toward was one that not everyone liked or agreed on. Part of that was because it was the very expensive, hard-to-even-fathom idea of the group fighting against a huge machine that would dive underground and eat cars, sort of like Transformers. But more importantly, Fast X would’ve revealed that Vin Diesel’s character Dom’s son, “Little Brian,” wasn’t Dom’s son at all. He was the son of Dante Reyes, the film’s villain, played by Jason Momoa.
This, understandably, was highly controversial and, according to Hertz, probably a big part of what caused Lin to butt heads with Diesel and his team. They held a closed-door meeting after only a few days of shooting, and, days later, Lin quit.
Hertz also talks about a bunch of other ideas that were pitched for Fast X and didn’t quite materialize. One that sounds perfectly bonkers was a “Legion of Doom” sequence, which would’ve brought back all of Dom’s past villains in a single scene, including our personal favorite, Cole Hauser’s Carter Verone from 2 Fast 2 Furious.
There’s much more in the IndieWire excerpt and, surely, more in the book itself, too, so definitely check it out here. Fast X Part 2 does not currently have a release date.
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