The Fast & Furious franchise is officially headed to outer space. The new F9 trailer which dropped on Wednesday morning revealed one of the most surprising turns of the story as Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) buckled up — not with seatbelts, but with space suits. Their flying car then turning into a rocket ship of its own and sent them into the atmosphere before the scene cut. You’ll have to see what happens next in theaters this June. For franchise star Vin Diesel and director Justin Lin, these new locations are a thrill, and taking the franchise to space is not being taken lightly.
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“That’s one of the magical things about this saga…we get to travel to all these wonderful places,” Diesel said during a virtual F9 press conference. “Part of the reason why Fast 10 has to be broken into two different movies is because there’s so much ground to cover. And there’s so many places in so many locations in the world that we have to visit.” Whether or not a portion of what si expected to be the final pair of Fast & Furious movies are set in space remains to be seen.
The Fast Saga sending its characters off planet has been a conversation among fans but almost as a running joke. The franchise started much more grounded than what it is now, seeing characters participate in street races where the stakes were their own pink slips. Over 20 years, it has evolved into cars jumping from building to building in Dubai or literally jumping out of planes with parachutes attached to the vehicles. As things seem to get more and more wild, F9 director Justin Lin took this new space endeavor seriously and put in some work on how to pull it off in a somewhat realistic fashion.
“I’m on the phone with scientists, learning about fuel and physics,” Lin told THR. “It was great, having the scientists on the other line going, ‘wait, what? What are you trying to do?’ I love it.” When he first spawned the idea of sending these characters to space, he drove over to Vin Diesel’s house and laid out the sequence for him. Both agreed with the design and the rest is history.
This trailer in its own way has extra meaning from Lin’s perspective, as F9 is poised to be the biggest movie of its kind to debut exclusively in theaters since they were forced to shutdown in March of 2020. “It definitely has a lot more meaning to it,” Lin said. “Usually as a filmmaker when you have a trailer, you are like, ‘Oh man, let’s not give that away!’ … I can safely say there is still a lot in the film that hasn’t been shared. I’m really excited for that.”
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F9 releases exclusively in movie theaters on June 25.
