Idris Elba is joining Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in the upcoming Fast and Furious spinoff, reportedly playing the film’s villain.
According to Variety, the Star Trek Beyond actor is in final negotiations to play the unnamed antagonist in the tentatively titled Hobbs and Shaw.
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While the characters played by Johnson and Statham have been at traditionally at odds in the film series, the spinoff film will reportedly see them having to team up against Elba’s character.
The news of Elba’s involvement comes just days after the was announced that the Vanessa Kirby (Netflix’s The Crown, Mission: Impossible – Fallout) is also in final negotiations to join the Fast and Furious spinoff.
Additionally, the film will be directed by Deadpool 2’s David Leitch and written by Chris Morgan, who has written the majority of the Fast and Furious films.
In 2017, Elba appeared in The Dark Tower, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel by the same name. That film was not as well-received as Elba had hoped for, something he spoke about in an interview with the New York Times in October.
“I don’t tend to read reviews but this was inescapable,” he said. “Cause it made such a big fanfare – ‘Dark Tower is coming out!’ And the reviews really beat it up. I didn’t take it personally but I was like, ooof, that hurts.”
He also spoke about how he had a tough time reconciling his personal views on guns with the nature of his character.
“I had a clash of conscience with my character. In America, there’s a real awareness of gun culture,” he stated, later adding, “Yes, I had an internal struggle with the Gunslinger. Given his title, it was impossible to avoid. The human spirit took a meteor-sized hit yesterday, and the world of America is falling off its axis.”
Last year also saw the release of Molly’s Game, Aaron Sorkin’s Oscar-nominated directorial debut in which Elba starred in alongside Jessica Chastian.
“I thought he’d be super-pedantic and edgy but he was chill,” Elba said os working with the longtime writer but first-time director. “Someone said to him, ‘We’re going to change lens,’ and he’d say, ‘Change lens? That’s exactly what I was going to say, let’s change the lens.’ He didn’t pretend to be like a technical genius. He just knows the drama. He really knows words. He knows emotion.”
While he has a handful of projects in the meantime, fans can see Elba as a baddie when Hobbs and Shaw premiers in 2019.
