Fast And Furious

Cars are an essential part of Fast and Furious movies, or at least they used to be before the franchise’s gradual transition to the action-packed special op-like theme. Before that happened (around the sixth or seventh movie), it was still mostly about the cars. Some vehicles got more attention than others, mostly due to the character associated with them. With this in mind, here are a couple of Fast and Furious vehicles that, we think, deserved a bit more screen time.

The restomod company, SpeedKore just made a one-off 1968 Dodge Charger based on Dom’s Charger in Fast 9. The vehicle’s official name is "Hellacious," and it is very fitting, indeed.

Fast & Furious 9 is set to make its debut in theaters on June 25th as one of the first major blockbuster movies to be released since Covid-19 ruined the better part of two years. To help create some mojo surrounding F9’s release and, ultimately, increase its theatrical success, Universal Studios is promoting what it calls “Fast Friday” showings of every Fast and Furious movie leading up to the first screening of F9.

The Fast and Furious franchise has wrecked a total of 1,487 cars from the first movie of the franchise all the way up to Furious 7. That total does not include all the mangled cars from Fast 8 (Fate of the Furious), Fast 9, and the Hobbs & Shaw spin-off movie. Put those together and the vehicular carnage in the franchise probably exceeds 2,000 cars. That’s a lot of twisted metal spread out over two decade’s worth of Fast and Furious movies.

You can argue that the Toyota Supra Mk IV and the 1970 Dodge Charger became even more popular because of their appearance in the original movie. But while a lot of people associate these two cars and a slate of others with the franchise, there are just as many vehicles — if not more — that almost made it to the movie. Craig Lieberman was the technical director of the Fast & Furious, and according to him, a lot of cars were considered for the original movie but were ultimately rejected for one reason or another. It’s time to drag race down the Fast & Furious memory lane with Lieberman to learn which cars didn’t make it into the movie. There are a lot of them, including a few surprise omissions.

The ninth installment of the Fast and Furious saga was supposed to come out May 22 this year. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic put those plans on ice, as it did every other Hollywood movie that was supposed to come out in theaters this year. Universal Studios called an audible and rescheduled the release for April 2, 2021, but now it looks like Fast 9’s release will once again get pushed back to May 2021. Oddly enough, COVID-19 isn’t to blame for this latest reschedule; the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of James Bond or, more specifically, the release of No Time to Die, the 25th movie of the long-running movie franchise. Originally scheduled for release on April 3 this year, No Time to Day was pushed back to November. Then it was pushed back yet again for April 2, 2021, or the earlier release date of Fast 9 before it got bumped off to May 2021. Don’t be surprised if Dominic Toretto sets his sights on James Bond in Fast 10.

Here’s another reason for Fast and Furious fans to jump for joy. The franchise teamed up with Lego to build Dom Toretto’s Charger and the end result is just as smashing as the Fast and Furious muscle car. Plus, given the whole coronavirus isolation thing going on globally, getting the set will offer a massive boost for any gearhead’s morale these days.

Fast 9 is speeding into cinemas this April, so expect full-blown marathons from F&F fanatics to start soon. One dealership in New York is raising the bar on the marathon-viewing experience by offering $900 to someone willing to put their Fast & Furious fandom to the test.

It’s not free money, though. The individual who’s willing to take the dealership up on the offer must watch all eight Fast and Furious movies and the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff. From there, a series of tasks is also required, including sharing the whole experience on social media. Do all of that and you will take home $900 for all you trouble. Is $900 worth all that effort? It will be for someone who has enough time on his hands.

A new trailer for Fast and Furious 9, aka Fast 9, aka F9, has launched and it includes the usual batch of impossible yet action-packed stunts and crazy driving antics to go with an a new story line that takes the “family” into new territory. Along with all of this, however, comes a number of questionable twists. First off, it looks like Mia is back in the action, but that leads to question as to where the hell Brian is – after all, they ran off together so that they could be a functional family. And, since when does Dom have a brother?

That’s what the plot of Fast 9 is all about, by the way. Apparently, Dom has a brother that’s not only a precious driver, but an assassin as well. Apparently, he’s spent his entire life trying to one up Dom – i.e. be stronger and faster – and now he’s out to kill him. It sounds like one hell of a brother’s quarrel to me, and somehow they’ll probably end up showing some brotherly love in the end. The action scenes look amazing, but as is the case with each movie that comes along, the stunts get more and more unrealistic.

What I’m more interested in, though, is how the hell is Han still alive? This isn’t an issue of the movie being based before the others, so apparently Han faked his death and didn’t tell anyone? There are a number of theories out there, and I guess we’ll find out in due time, but at least the movie is going to be interesting. I do have to admit, though, that these movies are getting more and more outlandish as they go. Hell, there’s even a Pontiac Fiero with a rocket strapped to it – the only way that car could ever be fast. But, I digress. Check out the trailer for yourself below and let us know what you think.

Fast & Furious 9 is hitting theaters on May 20, 2020. That’s literally eight months from today. At this point, the production of the movie is in full swing — it’s now in its 13th week — and, according to a video posted by Vin Diesel on his Instagram account, it appears that we should brace ourselves for a #202020 hashtag at some point in the movie’s publicity tour.

After all, the franchise will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, so the hashtag pretty much writes itself. Notwithstanding that little nugget, the Instagram video also revealed one of the most important stars of Fast 9. It’s not Vin Diesel or Michelle Rodriguez. It’s the heavily customized Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat that Diesel will be driving in the movie.

One look at the Charger in the video and you’ll know that it’s not your typical Dodge sports car. That’s one of the great things about the Fast and Furious franchise. Imaginations can run wild in all facets of the movie, and that extends to the actual cars that you’ll see in it.

The Fast & Furious franchise is becoming a staple in the news again, only this time, Netflix and the opportunity to binge-watch all eight movies in the franchise are what’s making waves. Turns out that the streaming service has announced that it will be removing the first three movies of the blockbuster franchise from its library on September 1. The move, while disappointing, isn’t unexpected. Netflix routinely takes down older movies to give way to new titles that are going to be added to the library. It just so happened that The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift are all on the chopping block. With this in mind, now’s as good a time as any to hop on to Netflix and spend the next few days binge-watching the whole franchise before that opportunity is lost by next week. Fast 9 doesn’t arrive until May 2020 anyway, and if you haven’t seen Hobbs and Shaw by now, then you probably need to watch that, too.

The production of Fast 9 has begun, and it looks like we’re about to see a handful of new characters in the fold. While most of the cast — sans Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham — will return for the ninth installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, two new additions to the movie are making headlines in the automotive world. No, it’s not John Cena, who, by the way, is in the movie. It’s not even Michael Rooker, who was recently announced as the newest member of the Fast family. The headline grabbers are a pair of cars, specifically a 2020 Toyota Supra Mk5 and a heavily modified, blacked-out Dodge Charger. If the additions of these two beauties aren’t enough to get you excited for Fast 9, then the thought of seeing them in action should get those juices flowing.

A day after Dwayne Johnson announced the start of production of Hobbs and Shaw comes another announcement related to the Fast and Furious movie franchise: Fast and Furious 9 will start production on April 20, 2019. Not much is known about the movie’s plot, but it is tentatively scheduled to hit theaters a year later in the spring of 2020.

After years of being in development — throw in squabbles and meltdowns from other members of the supposed Fast and Furious family — Dwayne Johnson took to Instagram to officially announce the start of production of Hobbs and Shaw. The movie is a spin-off of the Fast and Furious franchise and will star Johnson and Jason Statham, both of whom will reprise their roles, Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw, respectively, in the movie.

The long-awaited documentary chronicling the life of the late Paul Walker is set to premiere on August 9. The documentary, titled “I Am Paul Walker,” chronicles the life of the late movie star who died in a car crash in November 2013. Fans of Walker have waited a long time to see this documentary, which will feature never-before-seen footage of his daily life, as well as interviews with his family and friends, including his parents and co-stars in the “Fast and Furious” franchise.

The Fast and the Furious franchise can be blamed for the rising cost of Japanese sports cars in the U.S. The franchise is 17 years old this year, and among its biggest contributions to popular culture is the interest in the Japanese sports cars that appeared in the movie, including the original Toyota Supra, the Mazda RX-7, and the Acura Integra GS-R.

In a surprise to absolutely no one, a recent study conducted by The New York Times revealed that moviegoers who have just come out of watching Fast and Furious movies are embracing the franchise’s glorification of reckless driving, resulting in a spike of speeding violations immediately after showings of the movies.

The Fast and the Furious franchise continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Just when you thought that the respective returns of Justin Lin and Jordana Brewster to the franchise would finally steer it to calmer waters, the storm known as Tyrese Gibson strikes again. Worse yet, he’s going for the jugular this time with the most ill-conceived ultimatum in the history of Hollywood. Apparently, Gibson’s (one-sided) beef with co-star Dwayne Johnson has reached a boiling point, and he’s making it known by threatening to quit the franchise if Johnson returns for Fast 9. Yeah, that just happened.

If you haven’t been caught up, Tyrese has been on a monumental tear on social media, alternating between criticizing and pleading with Johnson to table the latter’s F&F spin-off Hobbes just so Fast 9 wouldn’t get delayed. The pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears, so much so that Universal has actually pushed the release of Fast 9 to 2020 to make room for a 2019 release of the Hobbes spin-off starring Johnson and Jason Statham. That development didn’t sit well with Tyrese, who responded, in true wrestling heel fashion, by throwing just about every available insult at the Rock. Now Gibson’s throwing the ultimate gauntlet, or so he thinks it is. It’s one thing to make an ultimatum against someone like Ludacris, but the Rock? The same guy who was credited for reigniting interest in the franchise? The same guy who’s actually the most bankable star in Hollywood today? Yeah, good luck with that, Tyrese. Who knows, you might parlay your Fast and Furious exit with a starring role in The Tooth Fairy 2.

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It’s been a while since I last had some good news to write about the Fast and Furious franchise so this feels like a welcome pivot from all the feuds and blow-ups that have been going on inside the franchise. Mercifully, this has nothing to do with the Dwayne Johnson - Tyrese Gibson feud because I don’t want to talk about that anymore. I want to talk about positive developments for the franchise, and this definitely qualifies as one because Vin Diesel has just announced the man who will be taking the director’s chair for Fast 9 and Fast 10. Tip your hats, folks, because none other than Justin Lin will be returning to the franchise.

This is big news for a number of different reasons, though I will say that both James Wan and F. Gary Gray did phenomenal work on Fast 7 and Fast 8 respectively. It’s not an indictment on their work that the franchise ultimately went back with Lin. It’s simply about going back to the director that played the biggest role in shaping the Fast & Furious universe to what it is now. Remember, Lin is responsible for directing four of the eight movies in the franchise, including the three best ones in my mind: Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Furious 6. His return could bring the franchise back to the treatment that helped turn it into one of the biggest movie franchises in the history of cinema, or at least that’s the plan. More importantly, Lin could be the man that can help mend all the fences that have been broken because of all the nonsensical beefing among some of the movie’s biggest divas. Here’s to hoping then that Lin is up-to-the-task. It’s about time that some of the franchise’s stars fall back in line.

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If there was ever a contest to determine the movie franchise that has claimed the mantle for most off-set drama, Fast and Furious is leaving everybody in the dust. Actually, there’s really no contest if you think about it. DC could make a run for it, but it still would fall short of all the happenings in the F&F universe. Remember the feud between Vin Diesel and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson that made global headlines last year? Well, that appears to be a thing of the past now because another bald-headed beefcake feud is heating up between Johnson and Tyrese Gibson.

For those who need a refresher, Gibson made news a month ago when he publicly called out Johnson, begging him to hold off on the Luke Hobbs spinoff project, at least until the completion of Fast 9. Apparently, neither Johnson nor Universal threw much chalk on Gibson’s pleading, announcing last week that Fast 9 would be pushed back to a 2020 release - it was initially scheduled for a 2019 release - in order to make room for the aforementioned spin-off that will star Johnson and fellow “Fast” alum Jason Statham. Predictably, Tyrese didn’t take too kindly to the schedule reshuffling, venting his frustrations on Instagram and directing most of it to the Rock. And, as fate would have it, another member of the so-called #FastFamily chimed in, except that he actually defended Johnson from all the vitriol Gibson was spewing. That man? None other than Diesel himself. So, Gibson is pissed at the Rock, who appears to not care, and Diesel is siding with his one-time nemesis. Really, we couldn’t make all of this stuff up even if we wanted to.

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With only two movies left in the massive blockbuster franchise, The Fast and the Furious is nearing its conclusion. That doesn’t mean the anticipation is dissipating because as the returns from Fast 8: The Fate of the Furious has shown - it’s grossed over $1.2 billion - interest in the franchise is still at an all-time high. The next movie on the docket is Fast and Furious 9 and, while it was originally scheduled for release in 2019, it now looks like we’re all going to have to wait until 2020 to see it.

Yep. There’s been a delay in the production of Fast and Furious 9. There have been no explanations given on the reasons behind the delay, but the official Fast and Furious page on Facebook made it official when it posted the new release date - April 20, 2020 - of the ninth movie. The schedule reshuffling can be attributed to a number of reasons, one of which I’ll be talking about in the section below. Regardless of the reasons behind the delay, Variety added that the decision could also impact a number of other movies under the Universal Studios umbrella. That includes Trolls 2, which is now scheduled to be released on February 14, 2020, after previously occupying the April 2020 schedule that now belongs to Fast 9.

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