What does the future look like for the Fast & Furious franchise? It’s an interesting question to ask of a series that began with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) leading a crew of young crooks who were stealing DVD players and catching the attention of young cop Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker), only to later progress to going into space and having car fights on the longest runway in cinematic history. Much like Mission: Impossible, the series continues to try and top itself with each new entry, and there doesn’t appear to be any real ceiling on the vehicular madness.
But if you ask producer Neal Moritz, he thinks that inevitably, the future of the franchise involves scaling things back. On a recent interview on Matt Beloni’s podcast “The Town,” Moritz discussed how “going smaller,” he thinks, will help the franchise in the future. “I’d like to kind of start to go back to where we started,” he answered. “I like to zig and then zag,” he said. “I like to try and do something different, and that’s what audiences demand nowadays.” He used Sonic 2 (which he also produced) as a comparison point, calling more of an action-adventure film compared to the original’s smaller scale and having Green Hills as its central location. “To me,” Moritz continued, “we have to try and go in a little different direction.”
The mainline films have, as previously said, been completely absurd with each new movie, but the spinoffs have attempted to branch the franchise in different directions. 2019’s Hobbs & Shaw was more of a buddy comedy that didn’t really have a central “they’re doing WHAT?!” set piece to its name, for better or worse. And the Netflix cartoon Spy Racers, while being for kids, has its own distinct flavour of espionage antics, including mind control formulas and underwater car battles. So there’s still ways for the series to keep on driving on after Fast 11 wraps things up, but as far as going back to their roots…maybe in Fast 12, they try stealing PS5s?
[via IGN]