‘Fast and Furious’ isn’t following the usual franchise route
After dangerous detour, series gains momentum
LOS ANGELES You would never know it from the Memorial Day weekend box-office results, but at one point, the Fast and Furious franchise was speeding toward a dead end.
The series got off to a blistering start with 2001’s The Fast and the Furious but sputtered with 2003’s 2 Fast 2 Furious, earning just $127 million, well below the original’s $145 million. There was talk of sending the third film, Tokyo Drift, straight to home video in 2006.
Hoping to buoy ticket sales, Universal Pictures approached the star of the first movie, Vin Diesel, with an unusual request: Return to a franchise he left after the first film. Diesel, who says he disliked the script to 2 Fast 2 Furious, was reluctant until he spoke with director Justin Lin.
“He said he was going to return to the theme of outsiders” with Drift, Diesel says. “That was always at the heart of the original story, so I said yes.”
Though Drift would become the series’ poorest performer at $62 million, Diesel’s uncredited cameo at the finale had fans buzzing.
The 2009 follow-up, Fast & Furious, would take in $155 million, and Fast Five followed with $210 million in 2011. Then, this weekend, Fast & Furious 6 opened to $120 million, the fourth-highest debut in history for a Memorial Day weekend movie.
Even the stars are puzzled by the franchise’s midstream turnaround, a rarity among franchises that churn out a half-dozen movies.
“I still can’t believe what’s happened,” Jordana Brewster says. “But it seemed like once we started focusing on family, we got even bigger.”
Indeed, F&F 6 not only lapped the U.S. competition this weekend, it was the No. 1 movie in 59 international markets. And with another sequel set for July 11, 2014, the series shows no sign of losing its muscle.
“It’s easy to downplay movies like Fast and Furious,” says Lin, who has helmed every film since Drift. “But that’s not fair to say it’s just fast cars and hot people. If it were that easy, every studio would do it. I think we hit upon a culture.”
The multiethnic cast “broke the stereotypes people were used to seeing in the movies,” says star Michelle Rodriguez. “These weren’t a bunch of Hispanic and Asian kids selling drugs or being pimps. We were just trying to show a diverse community, not sell it overseas.”
But that’s what happened. “I’ll admit, I was wrong about how much people connected,” Paul Walker says.
He adds that when Universal Pictures approached him about returning for the fourth film in 2009, “I asked, ‘Do people still care about this?’
“I’ll never ask that again.”