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There was no way the Fast & Furious franchise was ending on anyone\u2019s terms but Vin Diesel\u2019s. Dominic Toretto is the face and the engine of the film franchise, and in case you had any doubt, we\u2019ve just learned that when the action movie star announced Fast Forever last June<\/a>, Universal hadn\u2019t even greenlit the project yet.<\/p>\n No, really. This past weekend at FuelFest in Tampa, Paul Walker\u2019s brother, Cody Walker, who will be helping to play Brian O\u2019Conner in the 2028 movie, said that when Vin stood on stage and effectively confirmed Fast Forever last year, the studio hadn\u2019t signed off on it, and the cast practically learned about it on the spot.<\/p>\n \u201cThat caught us all by surprise,\u201d Walker said in response to a comment about the announcement during a HotCars<\/a> interview. \u201cStanding on the stage with him and he makes the announcement, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh yeah?\u2019 Now I have to field a bunch of questions and I don\u2019t know the answers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cVin goes, \u2018You know, Universal hasn\u2019t greenlit the project yet. They will, but it hasn\u2019t been greenlit yet,’\u201d Walker said. \u201cI go, \u2018Yeah I know.\u2019 He goes, \u2018I\u2019m gonna go on stage and I\u2019m gonna make the announcement and you\u2019ll see what happens.\u2019 So he went on the stage, he made the announcement, Universal didn\u2019t even know the movie was coming out. Now they do and it\u2019s greenlit.\u201d<\/p>\n Bold tactic, but then you\u2019d expect nothing less from Vin Diesel. Fast X hit theaters in 2023, and the release of the final chapter in the saga has taken longer than fans\u2014and, we\u2019re willing to bet, Dom himself\u2014would\u2019ve liked. Did he preemptively announce the movie just to get negotiations moving again? To put Universal in a position where they couldn\u2019t say no? Who knows. You\u2019d imagine that, as a producer and lead actor, he wouldn\u2019t have made the move if he didn\u2019t have full confidence in the result. Maybe the \u201cgreen light\u201d was just a formality at that point in time.<\/p>\n Perhaps one day, Vin Diesel will share more of a behind-the-scenes view there. What we do know is that Fast Forever is officially coming\u2014now in March of 2028<\/a>, rather than April of next year as he initially said. It will return the franchise to its roots in the LA street racing scene, and it\u2019ll reunite Dom and Brian, with Cody\u2019s help and a bit of computer magic<\/a>.<\/p>\n Got a tip? Email us at tips@thedrive.com<\/p>\n Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site\u2019s slate of daily stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest car news and reviews, no BS Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-357358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}