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Fast & Furious 9 Begins Production
Nathalie Emmanuel has confirmed that production on Fast & Furious 9 is underway. As its title implies, this will be the ninth mainline entry in the Fast & Furious franchise and the tenth overall, following August's Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. Vin Diesel will once again star as Domnic Toretto in the film, with Michelle Rodriguez similarly reprising her longstanding role as Dom's girlfriend-turned wife, Letty Ortiz. Rodriguez's involvement was only confirmed last month, after she got Universal to agree to add a female writer to the Fast & Furious 9 creative team.
As for the rest of the cast: it's known that Dwayne Johnson won't be appearing in the movie - following his much-publicized creative differences with Diesel on 2017's The Fate of the Furious - and will return as Luke Hobbs in the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff, instead. Nevertheless, the film will still include a wrestling star turned actor, albeit in the form of John Cena instead of The Rock. Cena's role is being kept under-wraps for now, but it's quite possible he's playing the as-yet unnamed villain in this installment.
Emmanuel, who joined the franchise as hacktivist Ramsey in Furious Seven, announced that Fast & Furious 9 has started filming on her Twitter account earlier today. You can check out her tweet, below.
Presumably, the emojis here present six of the characters that are returning in Fast & Furious 9. The bald-headed figure clearly refers to Diesel as Dom, while the following three likely represent Rodriguez as Letty, Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce (hence his bald head), and Jordana Brewster as Dom's sister Mia. While Mia's husband Brian O'Connor was "retired" in Furious Seven after Paul Walker's death, Diesel previously confirmed that Brewster would return in Fast & Furious 9, after being left out of The Fate of the Furious. Finally, the two emojis with laptops no doubt represent the two tech-savvy members of Dom's family, e.g. Ramsey and Tej Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges).
With a production team that includes both the series' first female writer and director Justin Lin (who was responsible for helming some of the most acclaimed Fast & Furious films to date, like Fast Five), Fast & Furious 9 seems to be in pretty good shape right now. It's certainly a welcome change of pace after the project's somewhat tumultuous development and pre-production. Among other things, Fast & Furious 9 was delayed by a year in 2017 and made headlines for the wrong reasons when Gibson subsequently lashed out publicly at Johnson, blaming him and Hobbs & Shaw for the date change. And not long before that, Rodriguez called the franchise out on social media for not handling its female characters well - something that Diesel supported and also helped to get development going on a women-led Fast & Furious spinoff. Despite all that, though, Fast & Furious 9's ride to the big screen appears to be going much smoother at this stage.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) release date: Aug 02, 2019
Fast & Furious 9 (2020) release date: May 22, 2020
