Original subtitles

This is a franchise that nobody saw coming.

Initially dismissed by critics,

expectations were minimal.

It doesn't fit the model of an action franchise.

But somehow The Fast and the Furious

has grown into one of the most successful and profitable

action film series ever.

We're about to make history

as being the most successful franchise of all time.

Why did Vin Diesel walk away?

And what lured him back?

Vin Diesel came with a long list of demands.

It's rare that you get to do that in Hollywood.

The series has created

a whole Fast and Furious universe.

Every film talks back to itself

and that's what I think makes the franchise

such an amazing piece of art.

As the plot lines became more incredible,

so did the stunts.

That's a fun part, right?

Hey, if you can fly a rocket-propelled car

and live to tell the tale, then we're here for it.

You have a lot of die hard fans out there,

the last thing we could do is let them down.

How did the series survive the loss of Paul Walker?

I just couldn't wrap my mind around it.

It just seemed impossible.

They essentially turned the final act of the seventh film

into a sort of memorial service, a memoriam to Paul Walker.

It became a real responsibility

on behalf of Paul Walker.

They lost a brother.

The Fast and Furious films broke all the rules

and ultimately became an enduring pop culture legacy,

with no signs of slowing down.

You're going to have excitement, color,

characters that you have grown up with,

you're going to not have a dull night at the movies.

As long as the fans want us,

that's why we'll keep coming back.

By 2015,

The Fast and Furious films are six movies in

and the series has become an undeniable

global action movie phenomenon.

The films navigated the departure of major characters

in the second and third films

only to come back with the original team

better, stronger and faster,

with a fan base that clamors for more.

I think the first movie was great

because it kind of introduced me,

and many fans, to this subculture

of the illegal car racing scene.

It was really exciting, really dangerous,

and there was just a lot of intrigue.

At the time,

no one really thought this would be a massive action franchise

because it doesn't fit the model of an action franchise.

Fast and Furious is a story of human beings,

of people that actually have feelings and relationships,

even though it's told within a set of stories

that are every bit as ridiculous in many ways as Star Wars.

They're also really good stories about people dealing

with some human issues.

And I think when we make fun of Fast and Furious,

we're often not thinking about the fact that as a whole,

this body of work, at times, can be really quite moving.

I'll also say, you know,

you raised the sacrilegiousness of comparing it to Star Wars,

I would also say, or Bond, or any given Marvel.

How many Spider-Man's have we had now? Right?

That we remake those narratives over and over and over again.

I do think that there's more human flaws

that drive the narrative in Fast and Furious

to make it more comparable to real life.

Family is a major theme throughout the entire franchise.

From the very first film,

which stressed the importance of making your own family.

With each consecutive film,

the plotlines shift from street racing to saving the world.

Together, the movies create

a larger Fast and Furious universe.

All the while keeping the focus on the idea of family,

and making household names out of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker,

Jordana Brewster, and Michelle Rodriguez.

None of these people were stars,

which is one of the reasons the billion dollar franchise,

multi-billion dollar franchise aspect of it all,

no one would have predicted.

It's April 2015, and the cast is at the premiere

of the seventh Fast and Furious film, Furious 7.

No one knows that this will be the last in the series.

Just two years earlier, in the middle of filming,

series star Paul Walker,

who played the character Brian O' Conner

is tragically killed in a car accident.

Hollywood was shocked about the death of Paul Walker.

However, it hit nobody harder than his brothers, his co-stars.

They had become a family,

and they lost somebody very near and dear to them that day.

Filmmakers were faced with a really tough challenge.

How do they complete the movie?

The story is rewritten

and Walker's brothers were brought in

to help finish his scene,

Then have to figure out how we're gonna rework the story,

how can we use CGI?

It ended up leading to filmmakers

doing a full rewrite and rework to honor him with the movie.

Instead of us looking at it

like an opportunity to finish the movie,

it became a real responsibility on behalf of Paul Walker.

But no one knows how the audience will react.

Could this be the end of the billion dollar franchise?

People were not only going to see the movie,

they were going to say goodbye to Paul.

There were people weeping in theaters.

In fact, it rakes in 1.5 billion dollars globally.

It's the first one to cross the billion dollar mark

at the box office.

The success means

that even without one of its main stars,

The Fast and Furious films would continue on

to an eighth and ninth installment, with more planned.

It's an unexpected Hollywood success story

that all started nearly two decades earlier in 1998,

with an article in Vibe magazine titled "Racer X."

The piece describes an underground circuit

of urban street racing in New York City.

You wouldn't believe a movie this big, this huge,

was actually inspired by just a magazine article,

but that's exactly how this movie started,

and it inspired one of the greatest franchises of all time.

There was clearly an audience,

there was an audience who is excited for car movies,

and we've had other car movies,

but it's been decades since Steve McQueen.

A Universal Studio exec hands director Robert Cohen

the article and he is immediately captivated

by the gearhead subculture.

I read the thing, and the first reaction I had was,

"There is something definitely here, there's a heartbeat."

And I felt it very strongly right from the article,

this is a whole world no one knows about.

Cohen attends an illegal street race

in Los Angeles to see the action firsthand.

I went, "Oh my God, what a world,"

And at that point,

I became absolutely obsessed with this film.

That original spark was what Rob Cohen saw

when he was on the streets of L.A.

There was an absolutely clear cut subculture

that had all sorts of

socioeconomic, caste, class,

kind of overtones that would go across the pond,

far, far beyond the epicenter that I saw that night.

Cohen starts developing a plot

that revolves around Brian O' Conner,

an undercover police officer

who infiltrates the world of street racing,

but ends up falling in love with the sport and the culture.

Cohen admits it is somewhat reminiscent

of Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 film, Point Break,

with street racing replacing surfing.

I know it's theft.

I'm gonna say it out loud from the get go.

The plot of Point Break would fit into this perfectly.

Alongside Cohen,

producer Neal Moritz is onboard to get the film made.

They cast Paul Walker,

with whom they had worked in the film The Skulls.

At this point in Paul Walker's career,

he was mainly known for Varsity Blues, She's All That,

so he was known as sort of this heartthrob character.

He hadn't been established as an action star.

We were at the table.

I said, "I'm developing one of these leads for you.

You are the one in my mind."

He said, "This is a no brainer.

Get the girl, got the gun, fast cars, undercover cop,

you're directing, I'm in."

I said, "Well, you gotta wait to read the script."

"No, I don't." He said, "No, I do not.

I know what you're gonna do with this,

and I want to be part of it."

Against the advisement of my representatives,

I signed on without a script,

in good faith that it would come together.

It turns out Walker is a bit of a gearhead himself.

I was exposed to it in high school.

In high school, that was the thing to do.

Wednesday night, we'd watch the cars line up,

we'd watch them race,

cops would come in and we'd run out, the whole bit.

The studio wants

Timothy Olyphant to co-star,

but the actor, who just appeared in Gone in 60 Seconds

turns down the role of Dominic Toretto,

so they meet with Vin Diesel.

Vin Diesel at that point was relatively unknown.

He had been in the movie Pitch Black,

that's where Rob Cohen had seen him

and decided to give him a chance

in this new Fast and Furious idea.

But the action isn't limited to just the boys.

I had seen Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight,

and she blew me away,

because I had not seen a presence like that,

and I'm trying to find a woman that can go toe-to-toe with Vin.

She's strong, she's intelligent, she's street,

and she looks like she could handle a guy

as dynamic as Vin is.

And Michelle is, she's as tough and probably as cool

as the character is in the movie in real life.

She ended up becoming the personification of Letty

in the perfect way.

She was the kind of girl who could hold her own.

She was tough, but she also had a sweetness about her,

and so much heart.

The final core family member is cast.

Jordana Brewster plays Mia,

Dominic Toretto's sister and Brian O'Connor's love interest.

She was mainly known as a soap star,

she was a young actress on As the World Turns

for over 100 episodes, and that's really where she got

her experience in front of the camera.

Ironically, the two women are missing

a pretty key element in order to film a car movie.

Hilariously enough, both Michelle Rodriguez

and Jordana Brewster didn't have a driver's license

before making this movie.

I had to learn how to drive.

I was under a lot of pressure, because I had about a month

to learn and to get my license.

Walker and Diesel

get to do some of their own stunt driving.

I love doing a lot of my own stunts,

and they allowed me to do quite a few of them

during the filming of this movie.

There was a part where the shot I needed,

I had to get wider, and I asked Vinnie,

would he feel comfortable

driving at 70, 80, miles an hour, free driving and acting

while we were filming from another vehicle.

And he was game and he did it. And you see that scene where--

Give me your hand!

And you see the whole car is near the truck,

and you see the tires, there's no faking possible.

Fast and the Furious, I think,

is every bit as much ballet as it is cinema.

Fast and the Furious looks at a car chase and says,

"Oh, we've done that before. A chase?

What is this? The 1970s?" Forget chasing."

They perform so breathtakingly beautiful.

But for all the action sequences and fast cars,

the theme of family becomes its most notable thread.

Cool edgy cars and outlaw characters

just seem to go together,

but the key was their affection for one another.

That's what I wanted more than anything.

You were watching an admirable group of people

who would die for each other,

and who felt like a family, and you really believed it,

and it wasn't because they said they were family,

it was because they acted like they were brothers and sisters.

Basically, the character Dominic, what has he done?

He's embraced all these street kids

and he's created a family for himself.

And I think just about anybody

can sympathize and understand that.

Respect that.

You go into that first Fast and Furious movie,

and you've got Brian and Dom, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.

There's an ego clash, but then unexpectedly somehow

there ends up being the most epic action movie bromance.

Vin and I you know, it took us a while to feel each other out.

We come from two different worlds

just like as our characters do in the film,

but we ended up getting along really well.

I don't know of a whole lot of movies

of any kind that blend those two things together,

taking both of them over the top, fantastic vehicular ballet,

and the serious notion of dealing with human beings

who have decided to link themselves

in some kind of family.

The early test screenings

of the film are promising.

They were applauding in the middle of the film.

Cheering. This movie has them viscerally.

And then when it ended, huge applause.

I mean cheers, I mean people throwing popcorn boxes

and standing on their seats.

All I heard out of the parking lot--

You know, these people were drag racing

out of the movie parking lot and the tires were squealing.

I go, "Yeah it went okay."

It's so well received,

Universal decides to push the release date

from the spring to the summer,

hoping it becomes a summer blockbuster.

There's only one small problem: the title of the film

Red Line was the working title of this movie.

I knew this was the next issue because it's a terrible title.

I hate it and I've always hated it,

but I didn't know what else to call it.

The studio pitches the title

The Fast and the Furious,

and the movie is released in June of 2001.

It goes right to the top of the box office,

earning 40 million dollars opening weekend,

and 206 million dollars globally.

I don't think anyone really saw it coming,

that this would be a number one film

grossing over 40 million dollars in its first weekend.

I don't think anybody predicted that we would be here today,

so many movies later.

It became both a cult classic,

but also had enough of a box office original draw

to be a little bit more than a cult classic.

There was something to build on, for sure.

The first Fast and Furious movie

ended up making over 200 million dollars worldwide,

which meant mainly one thing; there would definitely be more,

It's enough for Universal

but one of its stars isn't interested in coming back.

In 2001, The Fast and the Furious is a major hit,

making 206 million dollars around the world.

Revving up to ride the momentum, a sequel is in the works.

But, there will be something missing

when an original cast member doesn't sign on.

The first Fast and Furious was successful enough

that naturally a sequel was going to follow,

and they tried hard to get Vin Diesel to come back,

but he felt like it should be a standalone film.

Was that a risk when you found out Vin Diesel, for example,

wasn't coming back? Did you kind of think,

"Well, this may be an uphill struggle,"

'cause it is a different movie?

Yeah, I think initially,

I think that was everyone's concern, you know?

Because a lot of people attributed the success

of the first one to Vin.

But you know, apparently the fanbase was there

and the interest to see a sequel was there

regardless as to whether or not he came back.

So, we went out and made another one.

With Vin Diesel out,

Paul Walker is paired up with model and actor Tyrese Gibson,

who plays Roman, and rapper Ludacris as Tej,

for a Miami based story.

It turned out Tyrese brought a whole new flavor.

Him and Ludacris together were fun,

they rounded out the team a little more.

So, we're starting to establish a format

of what Fast and Furious is, regardless of who is there,

and building the family.

The role of Dom is split between Brian and Tej.

Tej knows everyone and makes a home for anyone who needs it,

and then Brian is the one who can piece everyone together

to take on this mob boss.

Director John Singleton

steers the film in a buddy comedy direction.

They had brought in John Singleton,

Boyz in the Hood, Higher Learning,

had a bit more of a resume behind him,

but definitely had the comedic sensibilities

to come in and add that element to it.

That second one is John Singleton having fun,

like you can see it in every shot, over the top.

The sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious,

is released in 2003, and the reactions are mixed.

Paul Walker was the only original cast member

to come back.

He was great, but it wasn't enough,

at least in terms of the critical review.

A Slate magazine movie review says,

"2 Fast 2 Furious is just 2 lame, 2 tame,

and 2 much like a video game."

The chemistry wasn't exactly the same.

The action set pieces weren't exactly the same.

It had a goofy title in 2 Fast 2 Furious,

and the critics just used that to death.

Yet it still makes 236 million dollars worldwide,

30 million dollars more than the original film.

People didn't love it. The critics called it lame,

they had nothing but bad things to say.

But luckily for filmmakers, luckily for the studio,

it ended up making 200 plus million dollars

at the box office, which is good for a sequel.

The third movie, Tokyo Drift, gets the go ahead,

but this time none of the original players are onboard.

Paul Walker drops out as well.

So now they've lost Vin Diesel after one,

they've now lost Paul Walker,

so they know they've got to start over from scratch.

The story is rebooted and reset in Japan.

Justin Lin directs.

It's basically like a spin-off film.

It kind of does its own thing.

It introduces new characters and new setting, a new world,

which honestly was a little daring to try.

Like, imagine a James Bond movie

that just goes and focuses on other characters.

Like, for a third film in a franchise, it was crazy.

It's a really entertaining, interesting movie

in terms of structure.

The third movie is as much about racing as any of them,

including the first one.

They nerd out on the car culture, the types of cars,

the parts, everything, as much as any of the movies.

The race scenes and the driving scenes themselves

are the best across the whole thing,

especially given when it was filmed.

The final race scene down the mountain

is beautiful in every single way, is done so well.

The race up a parking garage is innovative,

as far as how it was filmed,

and the cars they're using in it and bringing in, again,

that, "Over here we drift,

and this is a whole different thing.

It's still the same street racing world,

but it's a totally different genre,

it's a totally different style, opening you up,

realizing this underground community is underground

across the globe and there's different little niches

within it, but it's all part of one big culture.

They were like, "Okay well we're going to

do this Fast and Furious thing in this other place,"

Tokyo in this case,

"With a whole different cast of characters,

none of which you've ever met before,

but it's gonna feel like Fast and the Furious, right?"

So, we see that over and over again.

Right, world building is an important part of a franchise.

Just like Star Trek had to have its Klingon language,

and it's all this other kind of thing,

Tokyo Drift was a world building.

Among the new characters in Tokyo Drift,

Han, played by Sung Kang.

Han becomes the Dom character, Han has the chop shop,

Han has the space where everybody can go and live

when the girl gets kicked out of the family that she thought

was taking care of her.

Han is Dom, and we will always love whoever does the Dom work,

because we want to be part of Dom's family,

so we'll be part of Ham's family.

However, the movie doesn't feel the same

without Dom.

Director Justin Lin and the Universal executive

are hell bent on trying to convince Vin Diesel to,

at the very least, appear in the final scene.

They set up a meeting with him.

Diesel finally agrees to the cameo, but it comes at a price.

Vin Diesel came with demands

in order to appear in the third movie.

He wanted the rights to make Riddick into another movie.

They said yes and that's how they got him back.

Tokyo Drift is released in 2006,

and the reviews are worse than its predecessor.

It clocks in as the lowest grossing film in the series,

earning 158 million dollars.

It existed in its own lane, pun intended,

and it was a bad lane.

It got even worse reviews than the second movie.

Audiences didn't really take to it either,

partially because you need the stars, you need those faces.

Although fans and reviewers

are critical of this installment,

the one thing they absolutely loved

was seeing Vin Diesel in the final scene.

Nice ride.

I won it from my friend Han a few years ago.

I didn't know he was into American muscle.

He was when he was rolling with me.

This cameo might have been the most famous,

the most celebrated cameo, in history of cinema.

Fans when berserk.

What Vin Diesel actually did,

I'm not sure if this was the intention,

but he created an environment

where a short cameo stole the film. Fans went insane.

The studio is willing to make more sequels,

but what will it take to get the original cast

back behind the wheel?

The third Fast and Furious installment,

titled Tokyo Drift, is released in 2006.

And while fans love Diesel's cameo in the final scene,

the box office numbers are declining.

The studio realized they had to retool this

if the franchise was going to continue.

It was at the meeting a year earlier,

when Justin Lin was trying to convince Diesel

to appear in Tokyo Drift, that the two crafted the future

of the Fast and Furious universe.

They discussed the mythology of the series

and brainstormed storylines.

We also should be careful not to underestimate

the importance Justin Lin played here.

So, we have these two movies

that really kind of established the attitude, the themes,

the characters, and Justin Lin, I think, comes in

and organizes, rationalizes, gives it a plan.

The extent to which this franchise has risen and fallen

and been rebuilt, and the idea that Justin Lin

brought it back from a comatose state is, I think,

part of the charm of why we love it.

There's a couple people really responsible

for the entire franchise, but Justin Lin is the heartbeat.

Billed as "The new model with original parts,"

In 2009, the fourth film, titled Fast & Furious,

is released with the original cast,

Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez,

and Jordana Brewster.

It's rare that you get to do that in Hollywood,

return to a film, return to a franchise,

with the same characters,

and to continue to explore the character relationships.

It's a rare thing,

and it's actually a refreshing opportunity in Hollywood

to do it right.

Many regard the fourth film actually as the true sequel,

because it actually finally reunited, after two films,

the full cast of the first movie and really picked up

where the first movie left off.

In one and two, it's kind of feeling out

and inventing itself and everything.

Three is moving into new territory.

Four, we've got a director here now,

who's got a vision that's going to extend over several episodes.

In this film, the character Han,

who died in Tokyo Drift, is now suddenly alive,

and the only way to reconcile the gap

in the space time continuum

is to change the order you watch the films.

The fourth movie becomes the prequel to Tokyo Drift

and many consider it the true sequel to the first film.

It is not appreciated for being an amazing sequel,

because if you remove two and three,

number four really is the sequel,

not the actual one they had originally written,

but four is the sequel to one.

At the end of the first film,

Dom, Mia, and Letty are on the run.

They come out of hiding in the fourth film

and reunite with Brian.

With the timeline not sequential,

the films create a shared universe,

much like the Marvel movies.

Every film talks back to itself,

and that's what I think makes the franchise

such an amazing piece of art, is that every time you watch it

you're seeing dots being connected

across different chapters,

which makes you want to go back and watch those other chapters.

And so, it doesn't die because it's constantly talking back

to itself and inviting you,

"Go back and watch this other thing."

The films doubled down on the idea of family,

and it is a family more diverse

than what is typically seen in Hollywood blockbusters.

The Fast and Furious movies are also very successful

because of representation.

They brought in a ton of faces and personality types

and races that we didn't see in major action blockbusters

With each film, it grows

and how the audience has embraced us.

I mean, it's a very special thing to be a part of, you know?

And you realize that it is becoming more of a global world,

and this diverse cast has something for everyone.

It's a racially diverse cast.

It foregrounds the emotional relationship

between these two men.

It's your heist film,

your lovable criminal kind of narrative,

which is deeply class based.

Like, there's so much there

when you talk about diversity and inclusivity

The first films allowed Americans,

average guys like Dom, to see themselves,

and then later films added people

like Sung Kang and Gal Gadot and Ludacris

and everyone had someone they could recognize in there.

The action stars for generations

were all pretty much cookie cutter white guys,

from Bruce Willis to Nicholas Cage

to Vin Diesel to Tyrese to Ludacris,

people like that who weren't really allowed

to be in massive action blockbusters.

I just wanted to make a movie

that had a multicultural American feel,

because everything around the turn of the century

was very white.

To have that kind of family where it represents

different people in different cultures is a huge,

maybe the biggest,

reason these films are as successful as they are.

All of us who made this franchise

have created an American experience

that a very wide worldwide audience has been drawn to

like moths to flames.

With a growing international audience,

the fourth film makes 360 million dollars worldwide,

and with the fifth installment, Fast Five,

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is brought into the family.

We can actually thank social media, specifically Facebook,

for getting The Rock involved in this franchise.

Vin Diesel put out a request asking fans,

"Who would you like to see in the movie?"

The Rock was the name and that's who they got.

It was a big name to bring in

as the new protagonist slash antagonist,

depending who you're rooting for.

But, it was also big for The Rock to be able to say,

"This is one of the biggest action franchises out there.

I'm trying to be the biggest action movie star in the world."

To be brought into that fold was essentially a stamp of approval

for him as much as it was for the franchise itself.

This is a match made absolutely positively in heaven.

In Fast and Furious Five,

he gets to play both sides of the fence;

a bad guy, and then one of the family.

Hands down, like this is when I think they hit a stride

and we get a formula and we watch that formula be executed

over and over and it turns into a heist film.

We need to assemble the team and we need to execute this heist.

Four laid the seeds, it started to evolve a little bit.

But, Fast Five was when they came out and announced,

"We are a true blockbuster now. We are a franchise.

We're not only here for this amazing movie,

but we're going to be around a while."

The 2011 release of Fast Five

makes 630 million dollars at the box office.

Two years later, Fast & Furious Six is released

in 2013 and makes a whopping 789 million dollars.

That same year, they get to work on Furious Seven,

adding another big name to the cast, Jason Statham.

I think once people saw The Rock find success,

everyone wanted to get in.

So you got Jason Statham coming in.

It was like, "How can we reactivate our fans

and get more?"

Now that they had moved into

kind of this absurdist action, save the world genre,

you needed someone who knew what they were doing in that world.

The rest of the cast was kind of learning on the fly,

adapting very, very well,

but if you're going to make a movie of that scale,

of that type, and that kind of tone,

Jason Statham's who you go get, you bring in as a villain.

But then the unimaginable happens.

It's autumn of 2013,

and filming for the seventh Fast and Furious installment

is underway.

The cast and crew suspend shooting

to spend Thanksgiving with their own families.

They take a holiday break on the shoot,

halfway done with the movie, and tragedy strikes.

Paul Walker is leaving a fundraiser

with pro car racer and friend Roger Rodas,

and they are driving a Porsche Carrera GT.

Rodas is behind the wheel when the car loses control

and strikes a light post.

Both Walker and Rodas die at the scene.

One of the things that was so heart wrenching

about Paul Walker's death was the way he died,

that he died in a car accident.

It was almost a really tragic and sad irony

that he would have died in such a way.

This sudden and tragic loss

shakes the bedrock of the Fast and Furious family.

It hit them so hard

because the relationship you saw onscreen,

was exactly the same as the relationship off screen,

they lost a brother.

The connection between that main cast

is as real and genuine as it gets.

They talk about each other like brother and sister,

Like real family.

Like, this family is broken,

and it's not just broken onscreen, it's literally broken.

Rob Cohen is on set directing another film

when he hears the news.

And an assistant of mine came up to me

and he looked like bad news.

And he said Paul Walker was just killed in a car accident.

And I remember nothing other than I collapsed,

and I just couldn't believe it,

I just couldn't wrap my mind around it.

It just seemed impossible that this life force,

this beautiful man, this beautiful person,

this giving generous, charitable, loving person

was gone.

One of the things that stuck out to me after he died,

I remembered the last interview I did for him,

which was for the sixth movie,

and I asked him if he was in some ways like his character,

sort of an adrenaline junkie,

someone that loves the rush,

and he told me in that interview, he jokingly said,

"I love it. One day, it's going to kill me."

And I will never forget that moment,

in light of his death.

That was just a chilling statement that he had made,

even though at the time he had said it jokingly.

But there was a sense that his death and the way he died,

I think really did put a much more serious interpretation

over the whole thing and of this whole theme of family,

one of the things that happens in real families

is that people go away and don't come back again.

Vin was really stricken.

I mean, they had played every form of brothers or opponents.

They had been together every day for months on end.

Everybody felt like they knew him, like he was a relative,

or he was somebody they desperately wanted to know,

and all of a sudden gone, gone forever, except onscreen.

Off screen,

the writers retool and reshoot the script.

James Wan, newcomer director,

gets thrown into this franchise,

which is a big deal, to take the car keys of this huge thing,

and then to have your lead actor pass away mid-filming,

and have to decide what to do with that.

"How can we finish this?"

And also, "How should we finish this?

What should we do with this character?"

The filmmakers come up with an idea

to use Paul Walker's brothers, Cody and Caleb,

as body doubles and rely on CGI to help with facial features.

His brother was able to sort of stand in for him

in certain scenes, and he pulled it off beautifully.

No one would have even known the difference.

The cast members even talked about how seamless

that transition was,

and how much Paul's brother reminded them of him.

The next big decision for filmmakers

is how to resolve the storyline for Walker's character,

Brian O' Conner.

At the point that the seventh movie came out,

there was so much love for Paul Walker that had been expressed,

and so much anticipation for how they were going to address it

it on the big screen, and within the storyline.

The monumental achievement

that the end scene of Furious Seven is,

to have lost the guy that this all started with,

to lose Paul Walker, and decide not to kill his character.

They decide that O'Connor would retire

from saving the world with the team

to focus on raising his own family.

And they essentially turned the final act

of the seventh film into a sort of memorial service,

a memoriam to Paul Walker

At the end of it, to have such an emotional moment,

to move everyone in the theater, including, you know,

a bunch of macho gearhead guys

that you might not necessarily think

you're going to look around and see all teary eyed steaming up,

to just be hit with that emotion,

to have it be so poetic, to have it be so beautiful.

To be such a perfect way to send him off,

and to give the fans of the movie a way

to say their own goodbyes to Paul Walker and to thank him.

Furious 7 makes 1.5 billion dollars worldwide.

At the time, it was the third most ever

at the box office, behind only Titanic and Avatar.

And I think after this one, we're about to make history

as being the most successful franchise of all time.

That tells you not only the love for Paul,

but that the audience appreciated how it was handled.

When he drives off into the sunset,

it became this incredible emotional touchstone

for a generation.

A big question still looms:

what will the Fast family look like without their brother?

After the sudden and tragic death of Paul Walker,

Vin Diesel and the rest of the team reunite in 2017

with the eighth film in the series,

titled Fate of the Furious.

Charlize Theron is added to the cast as Cipher,

a cyber terrorist with plans of world domination.

I think Cipher might actually be the perfect character

that kind of brings in these new interpretive ways

to make this franchise continue to seem like it's taking place

in the time in which it's been made.

I think that there's a level of maturity.

We're now having a conversation on humanity.

We are not having a conversation on family or avenge or revenge.

We need to save the world from ourselves,

because Cipher is framing her evilness as a way

to save humanity from itself.

So, all of a sudden, we get real cynical

on the other side of Walker's passing.

With every new film, they up the stakes.

The Fast and Furious movies have managed

to tow the line perfectly between being so absurd,

because their over the top action sequences

are just, like, mind blowing.

The suspension of disbelief is maxed out.

That's a fun part, right?

And Luda will tell you this is that, you know,

where in the franchise, we get an opportunity to do things,

here's reality, and we take it to this level

above reality and have fun.

So redirecting a torpedo with one hand, yeah, not two.

There's no slowing down for the Furious family.

Sequels are announced for films nine and ten,

and the universe expands with a spin off,

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.

Hobbs & Shaw for me,

reminds me that the franchise is still, at its core,

fun for the people making it.

You watch Hobbs & Shaw, and it's just pure joy.

After going through the hand wringing

of Paul Walker's death, and then just to have this little okay,

Hobbs and Shaw are going to do Oscar and Felix for two hours.

It was so Fast and Furious, but it was so chill

compared to where we've been for the last couple of films.

Hobbs & Shaw hits theaters in august of 2019,

and grosses 759 million dollars worldwide.

Plans are put in place for a sequel.

Meanwhile, F9 goes into production in June of 2019.

They bring back Sung Kang's character, Han,

who's back from the dead again.

One of the great things about F9

that fans were so pumped to see

were the introduction of new characters.

You had Helen Mirren, you had John Cena, and others.

You also had the return of Han. He's back.

And and so going into it,

people weren't sure how it was going to play out.

So I think having those callbacks

and then introducing new blood

was something that fans really glommed onto.

And to tie up the rest of the loose ends,

they bring back Lucas Black's character, Sean,

from Tokyo Drift.

Sean is in it. I'm excited, I haven't seen Sean since three.

They add another one time professional wrestler

to the universe, John Cena.

One thing we knew coming into F9,

was that John Cena was now in the mix,

and he would be Dom's long lost brother, the evil brother.

F9 is scheduled to be released in theaters

in May of 2020, but is pushed to 2021 due to the Covid pandemic.

A tenth sequel is planned as well as an eleventh.

They said that the 11th movie is going to be the last.

That obviously doesn't include Hobbs & Shaw

and the offshoots that they have planned for the franchise,

but they seem to want to wrap up the main saga,

The Fast and the Furious saga,

to really keep that family aspect going.

They have such a huge band of characters, and they want

to bring a finale for the world to really love and admire.

I'm excited for prequels.

So, I have this grand idea, and I'm gonna say it here,

so hopefully to bring it to fruition,

of Mia and Letty teaching each other how to drive

when they're teenagers,

because the boys won't let them drive in their cars,

You know, and so the two girls come together

and figure out how to beat the boys at their own game.

I think the lasting impact

for the Fast and the Furious franchise

is really the fact that fans can make movies happen.

This is a franchise that I'm sure nobody saw coming,

especially with the first film, which was a big hit,

but by no means a global blockbuster.

And the fans worldwide just kept clamoring for these films,

kept asking for more,

And the cast and the crew just kept delivering

and really upping the ante with each film.

So, it really just goes to show

that if you really try to reach a large multicultural audience,

you will get it.

The Fast and Furious movies to me are fascinating,

because not only of their massive success,

there's no bigger franchise of the millennium right now,

but what that success means for other movies.

It means you don't have to have household names

in your blockbuster.

It means you don't have to have people who all look the same

in your blockbuster.

It means you can make giant blockbusters

that don't have to have super heroes or super spies

or Marvel villains.

They found something relatable, the love and the cars,

and then they made it bigger than life.

And that's what movies have always done.

The best movies, the movies we remember,

take things we can relate to and then explode them

in a way we don't expect.

I created a dream state built around the automobile,

the aftermarket engineering that came from a bunch of street kids

and there was a dream of family and a dream of the street

and a dream of car beauty and power,

and the dream still goes on.

It's not the standard demographics of the family

we hear of.

And then the added bonus to watching the story

of this family as it develops over many things

is occasionally just for laughs, they throw in

some of the greatest action adventure sequences

I think that Hollywood has ever put on film,

and I'm not being hyperbolic.

I think when Fast and Furious is doing its action at its best,

there's nothing better.

We watch this family come together,

we watch their tribulations,

we feel like we could be a part of it.

And it all comes back to what was that original spark?

And that original spark was what Rob Cohen saw

when he was on the streets of L.A.

This subculture that had a fiery following,

a fanbase that was passionate and connected.

The energy of that, starting with what I did and continuing

swept everyone away

and continues to sweep everyone away

and everybody's happy to go with it and to see where it goes

because there is no doubt about it,

you're gonna have excitement, you're gonna have color,

you're going to have characters that you have grown up with,

and you're going to not have a dull night at the movies.

And that's a winning formula for everyone,

for the audience, for the studio,

for the actors, for me.

It's a win-win, and I hope they go on forever.