It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the family. Fast X revved into theaters three summers ago in 2023, but the final eleventh movie—titled Fast Forever—has been stuck doing laps at Universal. But the Fast & Furious saga isn’t out of gas yet, as Vin Diesel promises four new shows from the universe are on the way to Peacock. But hold your horsepowers, team. What’s actually going on here?
At the NBCUniversal upfront presentation in New York on May 11, franchise nexus Vin Diesel stood on stage and gave a spiel about television opening up new avenues for cinematic stories. “For the last decade, we have realized that the fans have wanted more,” Diesel said. “They wanted us to expand the legacy characters, their stories. And for the last decade, the desire has been for us to enter the TV space that Fallon has mastered. And I had to wait till it was right.”
Diesel said the timing “became right” when Donna Langley, the longtime Universal executive who became chief content officer in 2023, “started to oversee it all,” Diesel said. “That’s when I knew that the integrity of the characters, the international appeal, what makes us all feel like family would be protected in the TV space… The news that I have here today is that Peacock is launching four shows from the Fast & Furious universe.”
While Diesel’s announcement that a whopping four Fast & Furious shows were coming to Peacock, Variety reported later in the afternoon from sources that only one series was confirmed. The other three are in “various stages of development,” wrote Variety.
So, why did Vin Diesel say there were four? That’s as much of an enigma as Diesel’s karaoke performance of Rihanna. But the one confirmed Fast & Furious series is set to go under the guidance of Shades of Blue writers Mike Daniels and Wolfe Coleman, who will serve as co-showrunners and executive producers. Diesel is also on board the show as executive producer via One Race. Plot and cast details are unknown.
This also isn’t new news. In Barry Hertz’s bookWelcome to the Family: The Explosive Story Behind Fast & Furious, Hertz detailed how Universal was keen on Fast & Furious spin-offs to beef up the Peacock streaming library. Ideas bandied about by then-franchise director Justin Lin included a spin-off anchored by Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris’ characters Roman and Tej, a period prequel following young Dominic Toretto, and a Yojimbo-inspired series with Sung Kang as his popular Han fighting drug cartels in South America. (Euphoria season 3, eat your heart out.)
The new shows are also implied to be live-action productions. This is worth mentioning because there has already been a kid-oriented spin-off, Fast & Furious Spy Racers, an animated series that ran for six seasons on Netflix.
The Fast & Furious is one of Hollywood’s biggest and unlikeliest success stories. Originally based on a 1998 Vibe article “Racer X” by Ken Li, which explored the underground street racing scene in New York City, the original The Fast & the Furious roared into theaters in 2001 to launch a series of sequels.
Fast Five in 2011 was billed as the final installment, but its success reinvigorated the franchise—along with Dwayne Johnson to lend some new muscle—to extend the saga’s lifespan to a two-part finale that has yet to conclude. Fast X opened in 2023 to a lower box office than its predecessors, which left Fast Forever in a state of uncertainty. A release date for the final movie is scheduled for March 17, 2028.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.esquire.com ’
