Fast & Furious 9 Filming Has Finally Begun

Shooting on Fast & Furious 9 is underway, star Nathalie Emmanuel announced on Twitter Monday.

“Day one of shooting Fast and Furious 9 today… The team is back together,” Emmanuel tweeted, with emoji that appear to represent tight family Dom (Vin Diesel), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Mia (Jordana Brewster), Tej (Ludacris) and Emmanuel’s own cyber genius and hacker Ramsey.

Justin Lin, who directed 2009’s Fast & Furious, 2011’s Fast Five and 2013’s Fast & Furious 6, returns to the franchise and directs from a script penned by series newcomer Daniel Casey (Kin). Casey replaces franchise veteran Chris Morgan, who was busy writing first Fast spinoff Hobbs & Shaw — out August 2 — which teams Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw.

Also joining the Fast family is franchise newcomer John Cena (Bumblebee), whose role has yet to be revealed but has been described as “badass.” Cena is in part replacement for the loss of Johnson and Statham, who last appeared together in the F. Gary Gray-directed The Fate of the Furious in 2017.

Franchise producer Neal Moritz previously said Fast 9 and 10 — dated for May 2020 and April 2021, respectively — will bring the series to the finish line 20 years after it raced into theaters.

“We have some big themes and things we’re talking about, we’re just not there in terms of where exactly we’re gonna go yet. We kind of have the ending point of the franchise, but we don’t know the in-betweens yet… Yeah, the plan is to make two more movies,” Moritz told Collider in 2017.

Asked if that ending point was envisioned by Morgan or by star and producer Diesel, Moritz answered, “That’s just all of us kind of putting our heads together and coming together with something that we think is very special.”

Fast & Furious 9 opens May 22, 2020.