Universal Pictures, the studio behind the Furious films, is thinking about spinning off the characters played by Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson into their own series. If you’ve managed to get into the theater to see Fate of the Furious, this doesn’t surprise you. Previous films pitted Shaw (Statham) and Hobbs (Johnson) against each other, but circumstances in Fate of the Furious pushed them together to accomplish a mutually-beneficial mission (and create tension).
This is a great idea
The two action stars are each powerhouses in their own right, able to carry effects- and fight-driven movies on their own. Instead of the two fighting for screen time, though, their tension was one of the best parts of the movie and made for many of the movie’s funniest dialogue moments.
Fate of the Furious is kicking off what Vin Diesel is calling a new trilogy, which will end the Furious franchise. With Fate having pulled off the biggest worldwide launch ever, that’s hardly news. With the series set to end, though, it makes sense that Universal wants to spin off the series’ most charismatic characters while the iron is still hot. If a full-length movie focusing on these two can make the chemistry work, then it might just be the answer to that question.
I remember sitting in the theater for the first The Fast and the Furious movie. If you’d told me that 16 years later, I’d be stoked for the eighth installment and that it would star The Rock and feature a story involving computer hacking and outrunning a submarine, there’s literally no way I would’ve believed you. But here we are. And this spin-off sounds great.