Do all roads lead to a two-film epic climax?
Despite the major hype for Furious 7, action fans have been facing the inevitability that the improbably long-lived Fast & Furious franchise would be racing to the finish line sooner or later – and that was before the tragic death of series mainstay Paul Walker last year cast a pall over the production of the upcoming seventh installment.
Now, Deadline is reporting that director Justin Lin, who helmed the last three sequels and shepherded the series from a fallen-fad to a pop-culture institution by reimagining the franchise as an absurdist action/spy romp between the third and fifth installments, is being courted to return for the eighth and ninth (maybe tenth?) films (Part 7 is currently finishing up post-production under The Conjuring director James Wan.) Further, Deadline’s reporter claims to have heard that the hope is for Lin to direct a (presumably) huge-scale ending for the series’ characters and their story, which would be shot concurrently and spread across multiple sequels.
If true, this would make Fast the latest big-budget franchise to take up the multi-part production model popularized by the Lord of The Rings and Hobbit trilogies: Warner Bros has tapped Zack Snyder for a two-part Justice League launch spinning-off from his own Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, while Disney and Marvel Studios plan to unfold “The Infinity War” across Avengers 3 & 4.
Source: Deadline Hollywood
