It took longer than expected to finally return to the Fast & Furious franchise, but in late June, four years after The Fate of the Furious and two years after the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff, F9 finally arrived. Moviegoers watched Dominic Toretto and his crew embark on another physics-breaking adventure, and naturally Ludacris’ Tej Parker was around for the car-centric fun. Now it’s time to focus on Fast & Furious 10’s development, and Ludacris has shared just how secretive the production already is.
While we’ve know that Fast & Furious 10 has been coming for years, now that F9 has had its theatrical run and is available on home media, now the next phase of putting its follow-up together has begun. Though that’s not to say that Ludacris is being kept in the loop on what’s happening. When asked about what’s happening with Fast & Furious 10, he responded:
Let me tell you something. It’s at this point [where] it’s so top secret, they don’t even tell us until it’s two weeks to start shooting.
With the way the Fast & Furious franchise has evolved from a series of films revolving around street races and heists to explosive adventures where its protagonists regularly save the world, I don’t blame the bigwigs at Universal Pictures for wanting to keep things close to the vest, even from its stars. Fast & Furious is now one of Hollywood’s most lucrative film franchises, so it stands to reason that spoilers about how each future installment is coming along are highly valued. As such, don’t expect Ludacris to get caught up to speed on what Fast & Furious 10 holds in store until shortly before filming begins.
Speaking of Fast & Furious 10’s production, a specific start date hasn’t been announced yet, and here’s what Ludacris had to say about that during his interview with Distractify:
To be completely honest with you, I’ve heard [that filming will start] sometime next year. They haven’t given us the specifics yet and I think that a lot of it has to do with the pandemic. Let’s put it this way, from Universal’s standpoint, they would love to shoot it next year and for it to be out in the summer of 2023.
Summer 2023 would have been a good guess, but Ludacris said the above statement before Universal announced that Fast & Furious 10 will race into theaters on April 7, 2023. Assuming that plan sticks, this will be the fourth movie in the franchise to score an April release, following 2009’s Fast & Furious, 2011’s Fast Five and 2017’s The Fate of the Furious. And considering that F9 began filming in June 2019 in order to be ready for its pre-COVID May 2020 release, I suspect that Fast & Furious 10 will start rolling cameras sometime in spring 2022 so there’s enough time to stitch everything together.
While Ludacris will obviously be accompanied by familiar faces like Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Tyrese Gibson in Fast & Furious 10, we’ll have to keep waiting to learn what these characters will be facing in their next movie. That said, Fast & Furious 10 will be the penultimate installment in the main film series, so we’re starting to approach the end of this creative road. Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more updates on what’s happening in the Fast & Furious world.
