Nearly 20 years after the Fast & Furious franchise launched, Vin Diesel is still arguably best known for his role as Dominic Toretto, having played the character in all but one of the main movies. Diesel and his Fast & Furious crew were set to return this Friday for F9, but as a consequence of the current health crisis, the movie was pushed back an entire year.
So now we must wait until spring 2021 for F9 to arrive, but in the meantime, Vin Diesel expressed gratitude for the time he’s spent working on the Fast & Furious movies with the following social media post:
Here we have Vin Diesel next to Michelle Rodriguez, who’s appeared as Letty Ortiz in six Fast & Furious movies thus far and will be back for F9, in Cuba, which were parts of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious were filmed. As Diesel noted in his Instagram post, Cuba is just one of many locations the Fast & Furious movies have shot footage, thus making it rather apt to refer to the franchise as “the world’s saga” in his mind.
Next year will mark two full decades since this saga began with The Fast and the Furious, which saw Vin Diesel and Michell Rodriguez acting alongside the late Paul Walker and Jordan Brewster. What once a series of movies revolving around street racing has evolved into fantastical adventures that see the protagonists saving the world in their vehicles and frequently breaking the laws of physics.
Still, the Fast & Furious franchise is still going strong, with both Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious both crossing the $1 billion mark. Last year also marked the franchise’s first spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw, which saw Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham’s respective characters teaming up again to prevent Idris Elba’s Brixton, a cybernetically-enhanced terrorist, from unleashing a deadly virus onto the world.
The main Fast & Furious saga will pick back up again with F9, thus bringing us closer to the end of an era. While the franchise as a whole will continue through a Hobbs & Shaw sequel and a female-centric spinoff, the plan is still to wrap up the primary film series with Fast & Furious 10. That movie was set to come out next April, but since F9 has been pushed back to that slot, it’s unclear right now when Movie #10 will arrive.
As for F9, it will see Dominic Toretto and his crew clashing with Dom and Mia’s estranger brother, Jakob Thereto, who has joined forces with Charlize Theron’s Cipher. The F9 trailer also revealed that Sung Kang’s Han Lue, who was believed to have died in Tokyo Drift, is somehow still alive.
F9 races into theaters on April 2, 2021, so keep checking back at CinemaBlend for continuing coverage. Keep track of what’s set to hit the silver screen this year with our 2020 release schedule.
