Us chats with the director of Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.
Fast & Furious writer Chris Morgan takes Us inside the franchise’s first spinoff
Don’t call it a sequel. The latest Fast & Furious film — the seventh for writer Chris Morgan — involves Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) but sets them off on their own story line. Hobbs & Shaw (out Aug. 2) delves into the relationship of the former nemeses as they’re forced to work together to take down a common enemy: anarchist Brixton (Idris Elba). Strap in — it’s going to be an awesome ride.
Q: What’s it like working with Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham? The biggest problem when working with those guys is just keeping them from cracking each other up. They’ll always give that big alpha-stern face and then they’ll say something deadpan or they’ll sneak in a joke. They can barely hold
it together until we cut, and then it’s just laughter from the entire set. It’s a blast watching them work. As a fan of the movies, as well as someone who works on them, I love the relationship of those characters, but it’s the way they mess with each other on set that makes coming to work every day so fun. Q: How does this film fit into the Fast franchise? The action is way too big, there are great stakes, there’s great heart. With the Fast films, it’s such a big ensemble that it’s hard to give specific focus to the individual characters. So in this, we have a little more time to look into what makes Hobbs, Hobbs. What makes Shaw, Shaw. Even though these guys are totally different in style and attitude, they have at their core the same code.