The time for one last family reunion is nigh. Now that Fast Forever, the upcoming 11th instalment in the Fast & Furious series, has revved up its writing engine with scribe Michael Lesslie (The Hunger Games prequel, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t), the next step is moving into the shooting stage.
At the 25th-anniversary screening of The Fast and the Furious in Los Angeles, California, franchise star and producer Vin Diesel revealed a December 2026 starting film date for the sequel. “We start shooting in December, if I can make good on the request from the studio,” he said to Variety. “I’m in a good place, though. I had to go through four sets of writers, four years of development, to get to something that I felt would be worthy of a finale.”
Indeed, it hasn’t been the smoothest ride to the finish line. The five-year gap between the release of Fast Forever and that of Fast X is the longest since the franchise’s debut, with several reasons contributing to the delay, including multiple changes of hands and high production costs. It seems things ultimately worked out, and Diesel has been open about his enthusiasm for the film, describing it as “the best script I have read in decades” and admitting to crying while reading it.
“I’m going to tell you something personal,” added the Dominic Toretto actor. “It was after four different writers, four years of development, and after I read the script, halfway through, one tear. By the end of the script that we crafted and worked so hard to make right for you after four years, I was crying. I couldn’t hold it back, and I had to tell everyone. And my sister said, ‘No more crying, bro.’ So I just wanted to say that sometimes, even the toughest guys in the world need to cry.”
Much of the project remains under wraps, but it’s expected to pick up after the events of the previous outing, which introduced Jason Momoa as primary antagonist Dante Reyes, Daniela Melchior as Isabel Neves, Scott Eastwood as Little Nobody, Alan Ritchson as Aimes, Brie Larson as Tess Petty, Rita Moreno as Dom’s abuelita, and more. Fast X director Louis Leterrier is back at the helm, and legacy cast members Michelle Rodriguez, who plays Dominic’s wife Letty Ortiz, Tyrese Gibson (Roman Pearce), Ludacris (Tej Parker), Nathalie Emmanuel (Ramsey), Sung Kang (Han Lue), Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto), Jason Statham (Deckard Shaw), and Charlize Theron (Cipher) are all likely to reprise their roles.
Leterrier recently shared that he hasn’t read the script, and the same goes for Rodriguez, who was also in attendance and expressed, “If I have any wish for the last one, it’s that they bring it back to the community because that community has kept us alive for 25 years; it’s a global community, and it has to do with cars, not this 007, bring your cars to space shit.” (For the uninitiated, the latter is a nod to the absurd and infamous plotline from F9).
The 25-year-old franchise has collectively grossed US$7 billion globally across all its mainline titles and the spin-off feature Hobbs & Shaw, becoming Universal’s most profitable and longest-running series to date. Alongside the forthcoming sequel, a new TV series is also in the works at Peacock.
Fast Forever races into theatres on 17 March 2028.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Kevin Low
