In the last few years, the Fast & Furious franchise has earned a reputation for its growing ensemble. Not only has the series regularly reached out and brought back stars from earlier films, but each new sequel is equipped with new heavy hitters, like Dwayne Johnson, Gina Carano, Jason Statham, and more. As a result, each new sequel is expected to up the ante a little more, and fans are left wondering who the next big star to join up will be. Everyone has an opinion in this area, but if it were specifically up to Tyrese Gibson, there really would only be one choice: Matt Damon.
As part of a Furious 7 press event in Los Angeles, I recently had the opportunity to sit down the series star, and when I asked him about an actor he would want to see join the Fast & Furious family, he gave me a rather enthusiastic answer specifically targeting the main star of the Bourne franchise. At first Gibson rattled off names like Brad Pitt, Will Smith and Denzel Washington, but it was when he got to "Mr. Bourne" that he began to explain his well-thought out plan to get Matt Damon to join his car racing, blockbuster franchise. You can watch his answer in full below, but allow me to tease the fact that his purposed plot involves his character, Roman, growing up in a foster home with Matt Damon’s character as close brothers before being tragically separated. Check it out!
To recap, Matt Damon’s character will get separated from Roman at a fairly young age, go off to become a badass in the military, and then reunite with his brother from another mother when Roman finds himself in deep trouble. I don’t know about all of you, but if that were one of the plot lines in Fast & Furious 8, I would take absolutely zero issue with it.
Of course, there is another option. As Tyrese Gibson notes in the interview, Matt Damon and the Jason Bourne franchise both have homes at Universal Pictures. In this day and age of cinematic universes and large scale crossovers, would it work to just make Bourne and Fast & Furious exist within the same continuity? Going back over all of the movies in both series, I can’t imagine that there are points where things overlap in a way to make co-existence impossible. I’m just throwing it out on the table.
Tyrese Gibson mentions that he has been fighting to get Matt Damon to be a part of the Fast & Furious franchise for two years now, but thus far we have not seen any forward motion – at least from an exterior perspective. Hopefully both the studio and the star will eventually at least play with the idea and consider making it a reality.
Furious 7 arrives in theaters on Friday, April 3rd.
