Fast & Furious 9 (F9) may be the beginning of the “last trilogy to end the saga,” but it turns out that may not make it the penultimate movie in the long-running franchise. Vin Diesel, in speaking with Total Film (via GamesRadar), all but flat out said that Fast & Furious 10 (which surely must be called FasTEN Your Seatbelts) is actually going to be a two-parter:
I started planning for Fast 10 before we started filming Fast 9. Very much so. … The universe is so robust and so rich with talent and rich with story that, on one level, it’s totally feasible to have spinoffs, and I think that’s something that is inevitable. Universal deserves it because of how much they’ve invested in this little saga, and it’d be good to give back to Universal. And for the fans, should Fast 10 parts one and two be the conclusion, it would be nice for this world to continue for generations to come.
Up until this point, the Fast movies have followed on from one another, but the plots of the films have wrapped up neatly by the end of each film. Concluding the 10-movie series with a two-parter makes sense if there’s enough plot to support it. Long-running franchises often pull this trick when they get a bit too much plot built up to wrap everything up in one sitting (see: MCU, Harry Potter). It does seem a little odd for a series of films where plot has usually taken a back seat to increasingly ridiculous car chases and discussions about #Family, but with Charlize Theron Cipher returning for F9, there’s clearly an attempt to make a bigger story here.
That quote also speaks a bit to the life of the franchise after Fast 10 and Diesel’s acceptance that Universal is going to try to milk the franchise for as long as possible. He famously, and very publicly, quarreled with Dwayne Johnson during the filming of The Fate of the Furious before Johnson went on to do the Hobbs & Shaw spin-off, but this quote seems to suggest he’s softened his stance on the “robust” universe being expanded. It can’t hurt that Diesel makes a ton of money off any movie in the franchise as a producer himself.
F9 opens in cinemas on May 22.
