Given it’s meant to begin filming in early 2025, the sequel to Fast X seems notably clouded. We take a look at Fast XI’s muddled status.
NB: Mild spoilers follow for Fast Five and Fast X follow.
In theory, the sequel to Fast X should be well mapped-out. The 2023 action film ended on a cliffhanger, while a post credits sequence threw in even more plot threads for the next film to continue. Fast XI was also long trailed as being the grand finale for the entire Fast & Furious series as a whole.
Put it all together, and the rough shape of a sequel takes shape: wrap up the whole story of the heroes versus Fast X’s villain, Dante (Jason Momoa), throw in some big action set-pieces, and give the eclectic cast a scene or two to say their goodbyes. Job done.
For a film due for release in 2026, however, things seem strangely muddled and diffuse about Fast X’s sequel. There are signs that the next movie won’t directly address certain aspects of Fast X’s ending; if recent comments from series regular Vin Diesel are anything to go by, it even sounds as though there’s some behind-the-scenes disagreements over what road Fast XI should take.
The problems for Fast XI began years ago. Work began on its predecessor, Fast X, as long ago as 2020, with regular director Justin Lin again taking the lead. Then, as filming was due to begin in Rome on the 21st April 2022, Lin suddenly left – reportedly over clashes with Diesel, whose creative control over the franchise is widely known, and repeated changes to the script.
French director Louis Leterrier – whose previous work included such action-heavy fare as The Transporter and The Incredible Hulk – was brought in as a last-minute replacement. In fact, Leterrier told Film Stories last year that he was hired just three days before the shoot was due to begin. The race to get going was such that Leterrier recalls scribbling down ideas on the plane over to the production’s base in London, then essentially interviewing each actor to make sure those ideas aligned.
Read more: Louis Leterrier interview | Fast X, Jason Momoa, and Alien: Resurrection
“That process never stopped,” Leterrier said. “Every day after shooting, we spent two or three hours together, one or two actors, just all working together.”
The change in filmmakers and resulting script rewrites likely played a part in Fast X’s budget swelling from an already huge $300m to $340m – a sum that includes assorted tax breaks in the regions where the film was shot. This meant that, even though Fast X made $715m worldwide, placing it fifth on 2022’s list of highest-grossing movies, it was still barely enough for Universal to claw back a profit.
The turbulent production on Fast X, its delays in release, its huge expense and mixed critical response, might explain why Universal’s plans for its sequel appear to have changed considerably over time. At one stage, Fast XI was going to film back-to-back with its predecessor before delays forced the studio to abandon that idea. It’s now thought that Fast XI will begin shooting in early 2025, though the way things currently stand, that’s beginning to sound rather optimistic.
Louis Leterrier is set to return as director for the sequel, and as recently as February 2023 has talked about Fast XI being essentially a send-off for the entire franchise, which by 2026 will be a quarter of a century old. “What we’re planning for [Fast XI] is gigantic, in terms of action, scope and emotion,” Leterrier told MovieWeb. “You will feel all the feels. Tears will roll.”
Between the time Leterrier said those words in February 2023 and January the following year, two things happened: the Hollywood strikes delayed Fast XI’s pre-production, and plans for the film’s plot appeared to have been overhauled. Far from the “gigantic” scope teased by Leterrier, the sequel would, according to reporter Jeff Sneider, be going “back to basics” with a lower budget ($200m) and a smaller-scale story involving “one last job”, or heist.
The most startling aspect of Sneider’s report involved Jason Momoa, who memorably appeared as Fast X’s villain; the story went that Fast XI would replace Momoa’s flamboyant villain Dante Reyes with a new antagonist. This is particularly strange given that a considerable chunk of Fast X was given over to establishing Dante, retro-fitting his backstory (he was actually present during the chaos of Fast Five) and his reasons for wanting to get even with Dominic Toretto’s crew (they killed his dad, Hernan).
Fast X also ended in a huge cliffhanger involving Dante, in which it was heavily implied that several high-profile members of the cast are about to be killed. Without a returning Momoa, Fast XI’s writers would have to deal with the fallout from these events without directly involving the character who set them all off in the first place.
Universal’s way of getting around this, it seemed, was to announce a spin-off movie – Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Reyes, word of which first emerged in June 2023. As its name implies, it would be a separate story featuring Momoa’s Dante and Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs, whose meeting was teased in a Fast X mid-credits scene.
Read more: Fast X review | A bludgeoning high-octane pantomime
It was also a seeming continuation of Hobbs & Shaw, the 2019 spin-off in which Johnson co-starred with Jason Statham; that film, directed by David Leitch, appeared to exist largely because Johnson’s very public falling out with Diesel meant that he didn’t want to appear in another mainline Fast & Furious film with him. Still, the gambit worked; Hobbs & Shaw made $760m on a $200m budget – in other words, a bigger return on a significantly lower investment than was spent on Fast X.
In this regard, making a lower-budget Hobbs & Reyes spin-off, then a lower-budget franchise capstone with a heist-focused Fast XI, might make financial sense; spend less on both, potentially get more back at the box office in the process. But even here there seems to be some uncertainty swirling about.
Over Thanksgiving, Diesel took some time away from cutting the family roast turkey to provide a somewhat testy-sounding update on the state of the Fast & Furious franchise. “I got Universal in one ear saying we need FastX2 by March 2026,” Diesel wrote on Instagram. “I have Concast [possibly Comcast, the corporation which owns Universal] in the other ear saying we need two movies to be the Finale!”
Diesel then added that “the writer on Fast Five” had sent him an image of he and Dwayne Johnson on the set of an earlier Fast film, and that this writer (most likely franchise regular Chris Morgan) had said “we need to see DOM and HOBBS resolve their differences” (the all-caps names are Diesel’s).
The actor concluded by saying, “I just want to get back to real street racing, practical stunts… and a reunion of that beautiful brotherhood.”
All of this raises more questions than it answers. Are the two sequels demanded by Comcast inclusive of Hobbs & Reyes, or does Diesel mean they essentially want a mainline Fast XII to follow Fast XI? If the writer of Fast Five wants Diesel and Johnson to set aside their differences, and potentially appear in Fast XI, what does that mean for Johnson and Momoa’s spin-off?
Nothing official has emerged regarding Hobbs & Reyes since it was announced last June; at one stage, there was talk of a Hobbs film being released first, its events paving the way for Fast 11. In a recent interview, however, writer Chris Morgan – who wrote festive action film Red One for Dwayne Johnson – gave a perplexingly vague statement about the status of the next Hobbs.
“That’s really something the studio would have to speak to,” Morgan told The Hollywood Reporter in late November 2024. “We’re talking about what comes when and how, but I’ll leave that to greater minds than mine.”
Put all of this together, and it sounds as though Fast XI – and the franchise as a whole – is in a state of flux. There’s a spin-off that may or may not be coming out before Fast XI, but it doesn’t appear to be written yet; there may be a Fast XII coming out after Fast XI, but a shoot date for Fast XI doesn’t appear to have been confirmed, either.
Series regular Tyrese Gibson has previously said Fast XI will start filming in 2025 ready for release in 2026 – the year the franchise turns 25. Certainly, it sounds as though Universal is pushing hard for everyone involved to meet that date. The longer Diesel and his collaborators take to nail down a script for the movie, however, the less likely it is that an early 2025 production start will be met.
With the central cast of Vin Diesel not getting any younger or cheaper to hire ($100m was reportedly spent on star salaries alone for Fast X, with $20m going to Diesel), it’s clear that most involved in the franchise agree that it’s nearing its logical end. But through a mixture of massive egos, feuding stars, disagreements over budgets and impasses over story directions, exactly which road the Fast & Furious juggernaut should travel seems to have left it trapped in neutral. It’s a curious state of affairs for one of the biggest film franchises on the planet.
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