{"id":968,"date":"2025-09-07T21:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T21:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/968\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T21:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T21:14:08","slug":"universal-head-donna-langley-regrets-sending-fast-furious-to-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/968\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Head Donna Langley Regrets Sending ‘Fast & Furious’ to Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEven Donna Langley<\/a> admits that the \u201cFast and Furious\u201d crew never should have ventured into zero gravity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m sorry that we sent them into space,\u201d Langley said of the decision to include a widely panned scene involving a rocket car and the International Space Station in 2021\u2019s \u201cF9.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe can never get that genie back,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n

\n\tLangley offered her mea culpa at the Toronto Film Festival<\/a> as part of a discussion with Cameron Bailey, the festival\u2019s director. However, Langley, who has plays a key role in guiding the franchise as NBCUniversal Studio Group and Chief Content Officer, said part of the success of the long-running series has been its adaptability. She noted that between 2006\u2019s \u201cThe Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift\u201d and 2009\u2019s \u201cFast & Furious,\u201d the films decided to shake up their creative direction and make them less about racing culture. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe knew that we had to figure out how to grow it,\u201d Langley said. \u201cWe made a conscious decision to pivot to a sort of a globe-trotting heist scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLangley credited Vin Diesel with having a deep understanding of the core \u201cFast and Furious\u201d audience, which came from his embrace of social media.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cVin was an early adopter of talking to his fans directly,\u201d Langley says. \u201cAs we saw that growing, and we saw where the conversation was going. We\u2019ve always been very fan first on the \u2018Fast\u2019 franchise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn some cases, that\u2019s led the \u201cFast & Furious\u201d team to rethink major character deaths, including the fate of Michelle Rodriguez\u2019s Letty Ortiz. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[People would] sort of throw out little things about, \u2018Oh God, don\u2019t kill Letty,’\u201d Langley said. \u201cOK, we\u2019ll bring her back. \u2018She never died. Don\u2019t worry. Nothing to see here.\u2019 But that\u2019s all led by fan engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u201cFast & Furious\u201d series has been praised for its inclusive approach to casting. That\u2019s something that Langley says came naturally. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s organically inclusive\u2026 it was never a conversation,\u201d Langley said. \u201cIt has its roots in downtown L.A. and in car culture, which is a domain largely of people of color, of the Hispanic community. It honors and celebrates it in a really beautiful way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even Donna Langley admits that the \u201cFast and Furious\u201d crew never should have ventured into zero gravity. \u201cI\u2019m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1506,146,1507,85,46,403],"class_list":{"0":"post-968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-donna-langley","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fast-9","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-toronto-film-festival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}