This hunt for the FAST 8 director is getting increasingly heated.
First, the report came out alleging that Vin Diesel was shooting down directors (including Jaume Collet-Serra) in an effort to helm the next entry himself. Then, there were a couple of social media posts that intimated that Vin wanted series originator Rob Cohen to come back. Earlier today, Vin confirmed these rumors with a Facebook post where he said that his mom told him, “Either you direct 8 yourself…or don’t do it,” but that Paul Walker had always wanted Rob Cohen to come back (“I believe that he can and would reset the franchise nicely, returning to what was the core of the film in the beginning…racing.”). According to Deadline, things are a long way from getting settled.
Apparently, Universal has no intention of getting Cohen, who presumably has a great relationship with the studio (they’ve distributed 8 of his 10 theatrical features), back for FAST 8, for whatever reason, and are still very much looking for new blood to come in and take the director’s chair.
Two names that they’re allegedly looking at are Ericson Core and Louis Leterrier. Core’s lone at-bat so far has been the Mark Wahlberg football flick, INVINCIBLE, but his upcoming flick makes him an interesting choice: POINT BREAK. While that movie looks like hot-shit-on-a-stick, you can’t deny that the similarities between POINT BREAK and the original FAST AND THE FURIOUS (and the ambitious second-unit stunts on display in the trailers) make him an obvious go-to. Plus, Core served as D.P. on that original film, so he’s sorta “family” without having the pesky, who-needs-that studio clout/experience of Mr. Cohen.
Leterrier makes sense for a similarly obvious reason: the first two TRANSPORTERs, which were doing batshit-crazy vehicular stunts way before anyone thought of using two cars to drag a bank safe through downtown Rio de Janeiro. Also, Statham.
What does seem to be evident is there’s a split of sorts between Diesel, who seems insistent on bringing things “back to basics”, so to speak, with either himself or Cohen as director, and the studio (and probably Neal Moritz), who want to bring fresh eyes onboard to kickstart the concluding trilogy. Vin has among the biggest social media presences in contemporary pop culture, and is consistently open on it, so it was only a matter of time before a rift went down that his posts would make fairly obvious. There’s too much money on the line at this point to either a. go along with everything Vin says or b. force him to go their way kicking and screaming, so you have a situation like this, where you’re getting some of that he-said-she-said bullshit (that Fred Durst once referred to) every day of the week.
If POINT BREAK defies expectations and ends up this massive, fanboy-galvanizing hit, then it’ll probably be Core’s job for the taking. But right now, it seems like anything, aside from actually giving face-of-the-franchise Vin Diesel what he wants, is possible.
But I thought I was joking when I said that Vin and Cohen should just tell them all to go fuck themselves and make XxX 3 for Sony, and then Diesel said that’s basically exactly what he’s going to do:
“I will leave this matter in the studios hands for a moment while I release THE LAST WITCH HUNTER and start production of the long awaited “XANDER RETURNS”.
Fucking badass. Even if I hadn’t just watched the re-release of IRON GIANT (and cried, once more, at his epic line deliveries), I’d be totally Team Diesel right now.
I don’t think we’re going to be seeing FAST 8 on April 14th, 2017, but if the stunts of this series are to be believed, anything’s possible.
