Michelle Rodriguez, Vin Diesel And The Family Open Up About Milestones The Fast And Furious Movies Have Hit As They Approach The End
They credit family, of course.
It’s been more than two decades since Dom, Letty, Brian, Mia and the rest of the gang first brought the automobile-centered action franchise to life with The Fast & The Furious. This summer, Michelle Rodriguez, Vin Diesel And more of the family will return for the 10th outing in the franchise’s history. We already know quite a bit about the upcoming 10th Fast flick, but at CinemaCon 2023 the Fast X cast took the stage for maybe the second-to-last time to share memories and milestones from their journey.
Specifically, Michelle Rodriguez got candid about what it meant for F9 to be one of the first movies to bring audiences back to theaters following the pandemic. She also noted that personally one of the big reasons she’s felt the movies have been so important have been because they have given opportunities to myriad actors of color in big budget roles.
The diversity of characters in the franchise is multi-faceted. The past 10 movies have increasingly included more women in hero and villain roles, and Jordana Brewster chimed in onstage to note she’s particularly proud the movies have “attracted” a slew of Academy Award winners.
Finally, to much fanfare, Vin Diesel was brought onstage to talk about coming to CinemaCon for the first time in 10 years. He talked about keeping the “family” together during that whole time, and touched on the pride he had for the directors of the franchise, several of whom can name a Fast movie as the most successful of their career.
I had to actually fact check this because noted Fast family director James Wan made well over a billion dollars on his DC movie Aquaman, joining an exclusive club, but as it turns out Furious 7 did make more money globally. Aquaman ultimately pulled in $1,148,528,393 while the 7th installment in the franchise brought in a whopping $1.5 billion and some change.
Ludacris also reminded us yesterday that we are “officially less than a month away” from the release of Fast X and as we’re getting closer to the end of the saga, it’s clear there’s a lot of pride the cast is taking with them in the work they put in and the bonds they've cultivated with the audience. We'll get one more outing with the main cast before the band officially is broken up, but there doubtless will be more announcement about upcoming Fast movies coming down the pipeline sometimes soon, just likely with a bit of a different bent.
In fact, Brewster has talked about the Fast saga continuing for "generations and generations" to come, and I'm interested to see what Universal will cook up once the final movie with the original cast hits the movie release schedule.
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Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.