I’m not ashamed to admit I absolutely love the Fast & Furious movie franchise. The first few came out during my formative years and helped to set in stone my passion for cars, which has led me to this wonderful career. While the later films have devolved from the core street-racing themes of the original, I still find them entertaining, even if they are, at times, comically over the top.
I’m not the only person who enjoys the Fast movies, obviously. The series has banked over $7.3 billion at the box office over 10 feature films, making it one of the most successful franchises of all time. The 11th and final film, Fast Forever, is set to hit theaters on March 17, 2028, closing the door on the story of Dominic Toretto and his “family” after 27 years. But that won’t be the end for the Fast & Furious brand.
Vin Diesel, star of the series, announced on Monday during an NBCUniversal presentation in New York that a Fast & Furious spin-off television series was officially in the works. Here’s what he had to say, per Variety:
“For the last decade, we have realized that the fans have wanted more,” Diesel said. “They wanted us to expand the legacy characters, their stories. And for the last decade, the desire has been for us to enter the TV space that Fallon has mastered. And I had to wait till it was right… It became right when Donna Langley started to oversee it all, because that’s when I knew that the integrity of the characters, the international appeal, what makes us all feel like family would be protected in the TV space… The news that I have here today is that Peacock is launching four shows from the ‘Fast and Furious’ universe.”
I’m sorry, did he say four shows are being launched? That seems a bit over the top, even for something as outlandish as the Fast & Furious franchise. It sounds like Variety had the same reaction, so it asked someone in the know, who confirmed that Diesel got a bit ahead of himself:
While Diesel said that four shows were in the works, an individual with knowledge of the situation confirmed it is, in fact, only one. Others are said to be in various stages of development at Universal TV.
As for what characters or plotlines would be making the jump from the big screen to your living room, that’s not clear right now. Diesel says the show will “honor the legacy” of the films, but aside from that, we’re in the dark on what to expect.
There are, at least, some big names attached to the show behind the scenes. Diesel will executive produce alongside Samantha Vincent, who executive-produced Fast films four through ten. Mike Daniels, best-known for producing Sons of Anarchy, will write the pilot episode, per Deadline. He and Wolfe Coleman will serve as the series’s showrunners.
Being a Universal property, the show is set to debut on Universal, though a timeline for production isn’t clear just yet. This latest Fast TV series wouldn’t be the first spinoff to wear the Fast & Furious name—don’t forget, Netflix had the animated show Fast & Furious Spy Racers, which ran for six whole seasons from 2019 to 2021.
Universal pouring money into another spinoff feels like a no-brainer. As Diesel pointed out, even if the main storyline is coming to a close, there are still millions upon millions of fans of the Fast franchise that are craving more action-packed stories that are at least tangentially related to cars. Why not capitalize on those desires through any avenue possible?
And it’s not likely that the Fast & Furious brand will be out of theaters for good. Universal already made one spin-off movie in 2019, Hobbs & Shaw, which brought in $760 million at the box office alone. If I were a studio exec being pressured to make as much money as possible, I’d certainly consider that.
Whether the show will be any good is another story. It’s likely some side characters could reprise their roles, but from the sounds of it, I don’t think Diesel is making an on-screen return. So long as there are lots of cool cars and action, I’m going to be watching. Will you? Let me know in the comments.
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com; Universal Pictures
Which means they are going to pay him a lot of money to stay as far away from the set as possible. By all accounts he’s a nightmare to work with, especially on the F&F movies, which is why there hasn’t been another Hobbs and Shaw movie despite the first one’s success, and why it’s taken so long to get the final movie that people were seriously starting to speculate that it might not happen.
Can one of the TV series focus on Jesse? Maybe we can find out what happened to him after he lost his dad’s Jetta at Race Wars. Call it Fast & the Furious: Jesse: The Manifold Files.
Please, just let things die. They should have stopped after 7, if not sooner. I genuinely cannot tell you one thing that happened in any of their movies after that one despite having seen them, albeit reluctantly for the last two and only once they hit streaming.
I can remember lots of things that happened, mainly because they were absolutely ridiculous – even for F&F.
I’ll watch the last one begrudgingly, but completely agree they got pretty bad