Vin Diesel Says ‘Fast Forever’ Starts Shooting in December
Vin Diesel says filming for “Fast Forever” has a start date.
via: EW
On Monday night in Los Angeles, Vin Diesel returned to the same theater where The Fast and the Furious originally premiered for a special anniversary screening — and an emotional victory lap.
“Twenty-five years ago I was sitting in this row, and I was sitting with Paul Walker,” Diesel said at Directors Village of his late costar. “If any of you should ever have a blessing to have a brother like Pablo, it is the greatest gift God could bestow upon you. So watch this movie and see where this eternal brotherhood started in every frame. I love you all. Thank you for tonight. Thank you for being here. Thank you for bringing your hearts. We make these movies for the world.”
Released in the summer of 2001, The Fast and the Furious was a surprise box office hit, leading to the most improbable long-running blockbuster franchise in Hollywood history, as this group of street racers went from hijacking semi-trucks to going to space and saving the world.
Throughout the years, the cast has expanded to include some of the biggest stars on the planet, including Charlize Theron, Jason Statham, Jason Momoa, John Cena, and Helen Mirren. But Monday was a family affair for the original stars, with Diesel attending alongside Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez, while fellow Fast 1 alums Chad Lindberg and Noel Gugliemi were also on hand.
As Diesel spoke ahead of the screening, he shared that sitting in the audience were his 91-year-old father, who flew in from New York just for the event, and Walker’s daughter, Meadow, whom Diesel walked down the aisle at her wedding.
“Outside they were saying, ‘What does it feel like to have Meadow Walker as part of the Fast family?’” Diesel shared. “And I said, ‘You have no idea how amazing it is to have Meadow Walker part of my Diesel family, when she’s over for holidays, when I can see my children light up with these huge smiles every time she’s at the house.’ Another emotional moment [is] whenever I see Pauline, who I named after Pablo, and Meadow together.”
Last year, Diesel hinted at the possibility of Walker’s Brian returning for the upcoming 11th and final installment. But it’s been a long and quiet road to Fast Forever. Planned as the first half of a two-part finale, Fast X arrived in 2023, but due to a disappointing box office receipts and a lack of fan enthusiasm, it took three years for Forever to finally land a release date of March 17, 2028.
“There is a particular weight that comes with delivering a finale,” Diesel wrote on Instagram in March. “A responsibility you feel in your chest, to everyone who gave something to get here, to the audience that stayed. You don’t take that lightly. You take it as fuel. And when you find out you’re going back to Los Angeles… back to the streets where it all began, something clicks into place. The city that made the first film feel alive, still here, still holding. Coming home to close it out right. That’s not logistics. That’s a gift.”
More recently, Diesel announced that he’d seen the latest draft from The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes writer Mike Lesslie, calling it “the best script I have read in decades.” He added, “I am still crying…”
Speaking to Variety on the red carpet Monday, Diesel revealed that production on Forever will begin in December, after the project finally arrived at a point that he “felt would be worthy of a finale.”
Inside the theater, Diesel told fans that there was going to be “an emotion” when they watched Fast 1 and teased that they should “start getting used to that” ahead of Fast 11.
“After four different writers, four years of development, I read the script, [and] halfway through, one tear,” he recalled. “I ended the script, and we had crafted and worked so hard to make it great for you [that], after four years, I was crying. I couldn’t hold it back. And I had to tell everyone. And my sister [Fast producer Samantha Vincent] said, ‘No more crying, bro!’ So I just wanna say that sometimes even the toughest guys in the world need to cry.”
C’mon, Vin, anyone who has seen the end of Furious 7 already knows that!
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