Leterrier ‘saved’ ‘Fast X’ cast after director exit
He gained actors’ trust after joining movie in progress
One year ago, Louis Leterrier was in Los Angeles finishing a project when he received the late-night call that would change his fate.
It was Peter Cramer, president of Universal Pictures, and he was calling with a script and an urgent request for a meeting at 6 a.m. the next day. Within days, the French filmmaker was on a flight to London, buckling up for the wildest ride of his career: taking over as director on Universal’s sequel “Fast X.”
The blockbuster was a week into production and locked into a release date when the sudden exit of Justin Lin — who had directed five of the previous nine films, including 2021’s “F9” — threw Universal’s $6 billion “Fast and Furious” franchise into chaos. The mad dash for a new director happened so quickly that the opportunity was overwhelming, said Leterrier.
But he loved the “Fast” films. He had been up for directing earlier installments. It was his dream to direct a “Fast” movie, his wife reminded him as he sped through a series of interviews before franchise star and producer Vin Diesel officially awarded him the job.
“I’ve seen all the movies. I really was a fan,” he said ahead of the film’s recent premiere. “And it was the one that got away.”
Leterrier’s eclectic career made him an ideal candidate. He had made his debut with the 2002 actioner “The Transporter,” directed the Jet Li film “Unleashed” and worked on the fantasy epic “Clash of the Titans.” He helmed the magician ensemble
“Now You See Me” and even took a detour into puppetry with the Netflix series “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.”
“He knew a lot of the actors already. He understands action. He’s done visual effects. He’s done drama,” said Cramer. “He really was the perfect guy to step in at a moment’s notice and take over, which is what he did.”
Billed as the beginning of the end for one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, “Fast X” finds Dominic Toretto (Diesel) scrambling to protect his extended family of loved ones and friends when a new madman, Dante (Jason Momoa) materializes from the past seeking vengeance.
The film takes place in Rome, London, Turin, Portugal and Los Angeles, and its ensemble includes core Toretto crew members Letty (Michelle Rodriguez),
Mia (Jordana Brewster),
Han (Sung Kang), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel); Dom’s recently unestranged brother Jakob (John Cena); ex-enemy Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham); former big bad Cipher (Charlize Theron); and newcomers Tess (Brie Larson), Abuela Toretto (Rita Moreno) and Aimes (Alan Ritchson).
The franchise may have begun humbly as the brooding bromantic saga of DVD player-stealing Los Angeles street racers, but it has swelled to increasingly bombastic heights. Cars have fought planes, helicopters and submarines, skydived and, yes, even launched into space. Characters have suffered amnesia, returned from the dead and unearthed previously unknown siblings over the course of 10 feature films, including the Stathamdwayne Johnson spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw.”
But for all its on-screen antics and soap-opera twists, the “Fast” films have an undeniable pull with audiences, said Leterrier.
“They’re the ne plus ultra of action filmmaking. The ‘Fast and Furious’ set pieces are always amazing because they have three acts within it — there’s a beginning, a middle and (an) end, and you never lose the characters within the action,” he said.
Lin’s fingerprints are still all over “Fast X.” A retconned revisitation of Lin’s “Fast Five” vault sequence serves as an opening showcase in “Fast X,” blending new and original footage. But many of the ideas Leterrier pitched to get the job made their way into the final version of the film.
“I wanted to go back to cars — that was actually very important to me,” said Leterrier. “Let’s do a real race in the middle of the movie, put Dom behind the wheel and have the bad guy be a driver.”
An important first step was connecting with actors left adrift by Lin’s departure even as production rolled on.
Rodriguez, who has played Letty for 23 years, described the tumult, which forced her and Theron to film a bruising fight sequence without a director.
“You’re ready to shoot the thing, you don’t have a finished third act, and your director just quit. Welcome to the heartache,” she said. “There’s tears, because you don’t want things to end up wack because people are rushing things or they’re worried about money so they forget the integrity of the thing. You wonder, ‘Will they find someone who’s passionate enough to take this on and care enough?’ ” In Leterrier, she says, the cast found a collaborator who “opened the doors of creativity.”
“He saved us,” said Rodriguez.
It’s not easy to be a “Fast” cast member — the roles require conveying precise emotion and character history in the span of short scenes, says Brewster, who originated the role of Mia in the first film and gets a rare action set piece of her own in “Fast X.” When things felt uncertain, she says, Leterrier earned the cast’s trust by trusting them to know their characters better than anyone.
“I think everyone was looking at us going, ‘Wow, the wheels are coming off ’ — no pun intended — and Louis got us back on track,” said Brewster. “I assumed that someone who just took on this job would want to go under a rock, hide and prepare and not be bombarded by everyone’s suggestions. But he spoke to every single one of us and was like, ‘Tell me your ideas. Tell me what you don’t like about the script.’ He was so generous, and that set the tone. And I think that’s very rare for a director, to be that open.”
The decades of history that characters share with one another — and the history fans have with the films — will become even more significant as the franchise builds to its grand finale. An 11th “Fast” film is expected in 2025; Leterrier is already signed on to direct.
But the end of the road, at least for the main film series, is already mapped out, says Leterrier — and if you pay close enough attention to “Fast X,” you’ll see seeds of what’s to come.
“We needed to understand where we’re ending in order to create the road to it,” he said. “So on top of everything that we had to do, we had to decide, ‘This is where this franchise is going to end. It has to end this way.’ Yes, yes, yes. Everybody agreed. Shook hands. And then we went back to work.”