Excluding archived Tokyo Drift footage used of him in Furious 7, Sung Kang had been absent from the Fast & Furious franchise for eight years by the time F9 came out. Years after Han Lue’s presumed death was shown yet again, this time with the added context of knowing Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw had deliberately crashed into his car, the latest Fast & Furious movie revealed that Han was actually still alive. Now he’s finally back with Dominic Toretto and the gang, and while it’s a good bet we’ll be seeing Han again in the final two Fast & Furious movies, Kang is particularly interested in making an R-rated movie that explores darker questions concerning his character.
Sung Kang revealed this while speaking with CinemaBlend for the F9 home media junket. While Han Lue is obviously a beloved member of the core Fast & Furious cast, Kang believes there’s enough to explore with his character in a standalone feature geared more towards adults. As the actor explained:
I have a huge imagination, and I feel like the character, the idea of Han could continue in another film. I always ask the question ‘Why? Why is he the way he is? What’s happening to him after?’ Especially, there’s a wonderful story [where] if you lose the love of your life or your first love, what happens to that person? How dark does that person go? What is the arc, right? I always daydream of like, ‘Oh man, I wish Fast & Furious could go Deadpool, like go rated R.’ Go really dark and see where this character could go.
Interestingly enough, both Sung Kang and director Justin Lin decided that the Han seen in 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow is the same one who would be brought into the Fast & Furious world four years later in Tokyo Drift. So in a way, we’ve already gotten Han’s origin story, although there’s certainly room to go back even further to explore Han’s younger years. That said, with Kang being 49 years old, unless the Fast & Furious franchise is willing to break out that digital de-aging technology used in movies like The Irishman, it stands to reason that a younger actor would need to play he character in those earlier years.
As for Sung Kang’s comments about lost love, that’s indirectly referring to Gal Gadot’s Gisele Yashar, who debuted in 2009’s Fast & Furious and met Han Lue in 2011’s Fast Five. By the end of the latter movie, the two were romantically involved and remain together up until the final chunk of 2013’s Fast & Furious 6, when Gisele fell out of a moving plane and has been presumed dead since. While Kang is game for Gisele’s death to be undone, if such a resurrection isn’t in the cards, this idea of following with Han after losing her and seeing how suffering such a tragedy changed him could easily fall under that dark, R-rated narrative umbrella.
Even though the main Fast & Furious film series will start winding down in the coming years, the franchise will continue to expand through spinoffs like Hobbs & Shaw 2 and a yet-to-be-titled female-led movie. So if Universal Pictures is willing to delve into R-rated territory with this property, maybe a Han spinoff could be in the cards, whether it’s set after F9/the remaining main Fast & Furious movies, or, as has become common with this character, we wind the clock back a bit, such as between Fast & Furious 6 and Tokyo Drift, or to the period between Tokyo Drift and F9 when he was working for Mr. Nobody. Han certainly has a big enough fanbase who would surely turn out in droves to see him spotlighted in a story taking place far away from the Fast & Furious franchise’s traditionally PG-13 confines.
F9 is available on Blu-ray, 4K, DVD and Digital HD now, and Fast & Furious 10 is slated to race into theaters on April 7, 2023. Keep your eyes locked on CinemaBlend for more updates concerning the latter project’s development.
