The first Fast and the Furious spinoff has added Baby Driver star Eiza Gonzalez in a key role, Variety reports.
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Gonzalez is noted to be a last-minute addition due to scheduling troubles with Godzilla vs. Kong, where Gonzalez will also appear, as that film nears shooting.
It is not yet known who Gonzalez will play in Hobbs & Shaw, which pits Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and mercenary Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) against international terrorist Brixton (Avengers: Infinity War‘s Idris Elba). Mission: Impossible — Fallout breakout Vanessa Kirby previously joined as Deckard’s MI-6 agent sister, Hattie Shaw.
David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) directs from a script by Chris Morgan (Furious 7, The Fate of the Furious).
Hobbs and Shaw is the latest entry in the ongoing Fast and Furious franchise, which Universal intends to mine and elevate into a cinematic universe in the vein of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As one of Universal’s heftiest franchises, the Fast and the Furious series has raced to more than $5 billion in box office receipts worldwide across eight films and has since birthed multiple theme park attractions at Universal’s domestic theme parks.
In April, Universal announced its partnership with DreamWorks Animation in bringing an animated Fast and the Furious television series to Netflix, centered around Tony Toretto, the younger cousin of Dominic Toretto (franchise star Vin Diesel).
Two more Fast installments are gearing up for releases in April 2020 and April 2021, respectively, as Johnson looks to build up the franchise-within-a-franchise “step by step.”
“There are these buddy movies from the ’80s and ’90s like Lethal Weapon and 48 Hours that really speak to me as a filmmaker. They’re ones that made me want to be a filmmaker in the first place,” Leitch told IGN.
“So to see the chemistry [Johnson and Statham] had in the last Fast, and to see the potential that they could be…it was hard not to say yes, and say, ‘Let’s go do this.’”
Gonzalez next appears in Robert Zemeckis’ Welcome to Marwen and Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel, and will later appear alongside Fast & Furious star-producer Diesel in Sony’s Valiant comic book adaptation Bloodshot in 2020.
The 28-year-old actress has emerged as a fan-favorite pick for Catwoman should the Batman anti-hero join Warner Bros.’ DC cinematic universe, sparked in part by Gonzalez’s teasing social media posts.
Hobbs and Shaw opens August 2, 2019.
