With the Fast and Furious franchise seeing a re-surgence in popularity lately, and the commitment of series helmer Justin Lin for the next movie the excitement for the follow up to this past summers Fast Five is hitting a fever point. With that said, more fuel to the fire is being added as rumors are hitting the web that action star extroidinaire Jason Statham may be joining the cast for the next 2 installments.
Source: Film School Rejects
According to the fine folks at Twitch, Universal is hoping to move forward next year on filming two back-to-back installments of the Fast & Furious series to take place throughout Europe. It only makes sense as Fast Five was both the highest grossing and most entertaining of the bunch. The plan is for Justin Lin to return for part six and for Peter Jackson to take over directing duties on part seven. That’s not strictly true, but Jackson seems pretty comfortable being attached to one half of simultaneously filmed epics so I figured I’d suggest it now. It won’t happen, but how curious are you now to see a Jackson directed muscle car movie?
The second piece of info uncovered by Twitch is that the franchise producers are hoping to lure Jason Statham into their fold for one or both of the films.
I love the idea of Statham joining this franchise and adding his own mixture of “bad ass” to this concoction of stars. Statham is certainly no stranger to making films where he drives cars at high octane speeds. He’s certainly welcome to join the cast of the movie as far as I’m concerned, now I’m just curious as to what side of the law he’ll fall on. I’ll definitely update you guys as soon as I get more info on this one.
