Let’s be frank: After 10 entries across 22 years, the Fast and Furious franchise is due for some upheaval.
Oh, what’s that? Did you think they’re just gonna stop making these things after the 11th entry, like Vin Diesel says? Absolutely not. This is Modern Hollywood. Everything runs on built-in intellectual property, everything has to spawn a franchise—ideally, several—and everything has to make $800 billion in China on Day One alone just to break even. We will be watching Fast & Furious films until our bones have turned to dust. New sequels, spinoffs, reboots and Surprise Returns of Your Favorite Old Characters will be in the works until the heat death of the universe. The great-grandchildren of Hollywood moguls who haven’t even been born yet already have their USC tuition covered, mark my words.
But we at The Autopian aren’t here to mock the economics of modern filmmaking. That’s a train we couldn’t stop if we tried. Rather, we are here to help.
That’s why today’s Member’s Only (thank you again for subscribing) feature Tales from the Slack is all about our dream F&F pitches. Any of these, if made, would rank among the most successful and critically acclaimed films ever produced.
Our ideas include new directors, new talent, and wild new directions for this venerable series. Call us anytime, Hollywood! We are here and we are absolutely shameless.
Your turn, reader. Where would you take the Fast & Furious franchise next and who would make it happen?
I also think my Ronin idea has legs. Or hands, in this case, since you seldom see the legs on the Muppets.
Get the team from Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey involved “Just pretend the copy right has expired and you have $100k to make this a comedic slasher flick”.
https://variety.com/2023/film/global/winnie-the-pooh-blood-and-honey-box-office-micro-budget-1235515255/
I still want to see a crossover sequel pitting the Family against Nicolas Cage & company reprising their roles from “Gone in Sixty Seconds.”
Thinking Kevin Smith with holographic cameo by George Carlin as Dom’s conscience.
They’ve already sent F&F to space. When do they blow up the earth?
Put us out of our collective misery, Fast and Furious.
I want an Ernst Lubitsch Fast and Furious!
Here’s an example of his work that shows how he’d be perfect for a modernized Woke Fast and Furious. Strong independent Female Lead with an up-to-date position on Russia too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A60QcsJtlE
Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape Of Furious.”
Ken Burns
A Wes Anderson F&F would be fun – two hours of Bill Murray and Owen Wilson just racing their asses off at the world’s most richly detailed slot-car track. Werner Herzog could provide periodic narration describing the existential dread they must feel when doing the same thing over and over and over. Somehow Wilson ends up getting electrocuted when Murray goes for a smoke. The end.
F&F the worlds fastest hoveround races public transportation to see who gets the last table at Dennys for the early bird special?
F&F Dom and the chick have tag team wrestling match and 20 driving laps vs Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the winner gets to empty their depends on Clint Eastwoods grave?
The entire cast of all 10 movies races from states away to the worlds slowest DMV to see who is first to actually qualify for a license.
I’m mostly done with the F&F movies so I don’t really have an opinion on that franchise.
I do have opinions on a couple of others though. I want to see either Samuel Jackson or Peter Dinklage as the next Batman. I think Sam would make the better Batman but Peter would make the better Bruce Wayne but either way I’m in.
I also think Dinklage would make an excellent Bond.
So long as Verhoeven isn’t considered, I’m good with all suggestions.
Still havent’ forgiven him for Starship Troopers.
I do want to see Kermit realize his car is about to explode and throw his arms in the air and wave them around as a fireball happens.
Not that I want Kermit to come to harm, I just like the image.
Maybe it was just the technology of the 90s that turned Starship Troopers from mobile infantry to a bunch of people in football pads. I’d like to see it redone today with modern special effects. I think IronMan has shown that we could do the book justice today.
I suspect Verhoeven was keeping his special effects budget for where it counted. That bombing run blowing up bugs from the air was one of the largest in camera explosions ever done at the time (it still might be), pretty impressive for what is basically a throwaway shot.
Given the sheer numbers of extras in the film the ability to produce hundreds of sets of identical armor was probably more important than how it looked.
George Miller is a bit obvious of a choice, but let’s bring the series back down: a harrowing tale of madness and rust under huge open desert sky of Australia.
The teaser trailer starts with a wide shot and the voice of VD talking unintelligibly about family, then the camera settles on the bones of a Ute and the clanking of tools as the title appears: Furious 11: Wrenches and Spiders.
“In this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed… men like Dom.”
[cut to a black and white clip of Toretto beating up that guy]
Why am I not at all surprised that DT had absolutely nothing to say on the matter…
(no offense intended, I don’t know who most of those directors are either)
It has gotten into the CGI sequel predictability trap.
So Brian De Palma or Martin Scorcese, mix it up a bit, some old time gore and suspense needed.
Nicholas Winding Refn for me.
He’d turn the series’ live action cartoon/multicultural beer commercial vibe into a neon-soaked, slow-motion meditation on professionals, crime, and other things we don’t quite get but seem like they could be deep. And Vin Diesel might spend long periods of time not talking.
This would be so badass. It would also probably be five hours long. I’m in
Y’all missed another obvious option – The Wachowskis.
I too hope David’s ok, and hasn’t run off with that U-Haul temptress.
Interesting question.
James Gunn
Taika Waititi
Jon Favreau
james cameron
Before I even started reading the comments posted in this article, I was thinking “David Lynch”. But Torch beat me to it!
I’d have him make the next entry to the franchise post apocalyptic. Think Mad Max with a cosmic horror vibe and gothic aesthetics for the characters and cars.
Consider the imagery in the following music video as a good template with which to fabricate the setting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_aUIls1fwQ
Eraserhead is my favorite David Lynch film. It gives me the warm and fuzzies. You couldn’t go wrong with David Lynch as the director, with Tim Burton as the producer.
Definitely post apocalyptic, have them all wake up from cryogenic sleep, by a relative 100s of years in the future to help save them/planet/family from complete annihilation. And at the end of the movie with Earths safety secured, and independence day size ship descends and take them away….. Cut to a preview of the next movie….Dom in a space Charger racing against others ALA REDLINE ( cartoon movie that’s epic). Now family is in space racing to save all human kind and the galaxy!
I was thinking more along the lines of David Lynch and Tim Burton making their own interpretation of a low-budget 80s-era Italian-made Mad Max ripoff, with cosmic horror added, set in the F&F universe using the F&F cars and characters.
It would be gratuitously over-the-top violent and gory. Maybe Dom puts large spikes on the front of his Charger so that when he runs people down, their heads get impaled on the front, where they remain for the rest of the film as war trophies and slowly decompose through the course of the film. Dom himself will walk around wearing chain mail and these cheap 80s shades, carrying a minigun, as a reference to Fender off of the movie Cyborg. The F150 Lightning seen in the first film gets the bro-truck treatment, but Mad Max style, put on a massive lift with monster truck wheels, steel plating all over it for armor, a welded battering ram up front, spikes on the wheels, and a massive supercharger sticking out of the hood. As a nod to Deathrace 2000, there MUST be a scene with this truck peeling out on someone and shredding them to pieces. Edward Scissorhands should also make an appearance, driving a 70s-era Stutz Blackhawk, all murdered out with a black-on-black paint scheme, and have a scene where he cuts someone to pieces.
As a nod to an earlier F&F film, witchcraft returns, but in abundance. Take it a few steps further than it appeared in a previous F&F film, such that there should be people sacrificed in rituals and demons summoned, eventually evoking an appearance by The Great Old One!
Like Fury Road, it needs to depict a totally barren and dead Earth. Like in the video linked above, there needs to be megalithic anomalies that make no sense, such as skeletons of animals that are miles tall, or downed flying saucers the size of cities.
And somewhere in the film, there would have to be room for a Mexican midget rodeo, where a bunch of midgets ride tuned pocket bikes.
I’ve never seen a single F&F movie, and I don’t have any particular interest in them. Go ahead, convince me I’m wrong (seriously!)
The last movie I saw was Chantal Ackerman’s ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ – which I actually, after three and a half hours, liked – so I’d like to imagine a Chantal Ackerman F & F movie.
If David Byrne made a F&F movie it would all take place on bicycles.
Now I want to imagine what an Ivo van Hove stage production of F&F would be like.
A bicycle-themed F&F movie would make velomobiles obligatory.
Wasn’t Breaking Away essentially a bicycle Fast and Furious?
Breaking Away had a lot more heart. And when someone wrecked their bicycle they didn’t fly through the air for 60 feet and land on another bike and keep going.
Also the bicycles only had 10 speeds – if it was like an F&F movie they would have had about 50.
After reading that this series was dumb, but entertaining, I tried to watch one- I can’t remember which. It was terrible. And I love horrible movies. But I’d watch a Cronenberg where the cars are creatures that have to sexually eat the drivers and exude lots of goo.
Oh, shit, even better… cars infected with mildew and mold are turned into womb-like cocoons that emit an adrenaline or dopamine like drug, and all the stars dramatically crawl into the pulsating mold and just hallucinate their adventures while being nursed the drug from sentient car/mold appendages.
This sounds like you’re starting to envision the melding of the F&F and Cars franchises, in the vein of some of Torch’s ramblings on the Cars universe…
Great job on opening up both franchises to new audiences!
This is not too far off the show Blood Drive from a few years back. Not exactly the same, but definitely lots of bodily fluids and cars eating people.
Sadly, I hated the ending of the first season, and since it ended up being the only season I have to assume I was not alone.
John Waters F&F. Make it happen, people.
10/10 would watch a F&F with Divine (or the ghost of Divine) in it.
Terry Gilliam, and Dom is played by a paper cutout.
Mr. George’s concern over Mr. Tracy’s well being is truly inspiring.
Meanwhile, hip-deep in a rusty XJ carcass located at a bone-dry junkyard in southern Utah….
He’s probably alive somewhere. I saw a picture of a U-Haul in grass in Slack, so, yeah.
It would need to have a shot of a laptop with a bizarre flashing graphic saying “WARNING: DANGER TO KERMITFROG”.
Then Dom and the Buster can both yell “FO-O-OZZZ” before they run away and the car explodes.
I was too late for the Slack chat because Australia, I think Taika Waititi could do something to bring more humour into the series.
That, or the Coen Brothers?
I’d watch a Coen Brothers F&F.
Preferable with a script by Cormac McCarthy.
The Fastidious and Futile.