Vin Diesel is pretty much synonymous with the Fast & Furious franchise. He appears in the saga six times, not including his cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Diesel credits a discussion with director Rob Cohen as the reason he joined the wildly popular series in the first place.
When he was first approached to join the film, Diesel was still riding high from his first starring role in the sci-fi action horror film Pitch Black. He played the pale-eyed anti-hero Riddick, whose illegally enhanced eyes allowed him to see in the dark. The movie proved Diesel had what it took to be an action hero on par with Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis. His performance caught the eye of the filmmakers working on a movie called Redline, which was later renamed The Fast and the Furious.
The shot that caught Vin Diesel’s eye
Diesel reminisced about the first time he spoke with Cohen about the movie to Variety. “He described to me one shot,” Diesel recalled. “He described to me the shot where the camera goes through my eyes, down my arm, and into the car.” That short description was all it took to get Diesel on board. “…I felt like it was such a cool image and I’d never seen anything like it that I signed on to do the movie.” There was still work to be done before Diesel was fully satisfied with the role, however, and it all had to do with the script.
With his background in New York theater, Diesel admitted that he was “very particular about scripts” and that he “expected them all to be works of creation.” After reading through the script the first time, Diesel called for a meeting and told them, “We have to make this script a whole lot better.”
The series became a worldwide phenomenon
Apparently, his input worked, because it set in motion a franchise that would span eight movies, with one coming out later this year. There has also been a spinoff, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbes & Shaw featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham, which grossed about $760 million worldwide. There are also reports that the series is looking to make an all-female spinoff.
Since a lot of Diesel’s fame rests on the success of the Fast & Furious saga, tabloids target both him and the franchise with their lies. Star claimed that Johnson was dropping out of Fast & Furious 9 because Diesel was directing it. Gossip Cop can confirm nothing about that story is true. Johnson explained in the past that his character, Hobbes, wouldn’t be appearing in the ninth installment of the series due to his appearance in Hobbes & Shaw, which created a scheduling conflict. Diesel is also not directing the movie, as that honor goes to veteran Fast & Furious director Jeremy Lin, who has directed four of the previous installments. It only took a small amount of research to figure out the truth, but we wouldn’t expect the tabloid to do that when they can just spew unsubstantiated and bogus lies instead.