FAST SIX will switch from street racing to heist action

It looks like the days of street racing are coming to an end in the Fast and Furious franchise. According to Deadline, Adam Fogelson and co-chairman Donna Langley are planning a bold and provocative move on their highly lucrative franchise. This type of shift has not been pulled off and is crazy enough that it may work. Earlier we reported that Chris Morgan (screenwriter of Fast Five as well as The Fast And The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift, and Fast & Furious 4) had been hired to write the script for the sixth installment as part of his new production deal at the studio. This shift actually makes a lot of sense seeing as how the story of Fast Five sets up a Fast Six whose plot revolves around a major robbery. Universal's goal is to transform the street-racing franchise into a series of heist films.

Despite the success that the studio had with bringing back the cast for Fast and Furious under Marc Shmuger and co-chairman David Linde there is interest in adapting the franchise even further for it's livelihood on the whole.  Fogelson and Langley wondered how long would or could the franchise last as is when they took over. In a recent interview Fogelson stated, "The question putting Fast Five and Fast Six together for us was: Can we take it out of being a pure car culture movie and into being a true action franchise in the spirit of those great heist films made 10 or 15 years ago?" 

The overall concensus at the studio was that the next installments had to be less about street racing and about more inclusive subject matter. Fogelson went on to say:

"We've heard so many people say, 'I've never seen one, and I've never wanted to see one,' about the Fast franchise. So if these movies were still about street racing, there was probably a ceiling on how many people would buy tickets. We wanted to see if we could raise it out of about racing and make car driving ability just a part of the movie, like those great chases in The French Connection, The Bourne Identity, The Italian Job."

Fogelson shared he and Dodge's plans:

"Our strategy behind one of the biggest bets we've ever made is that the business has gone so far towards CG action every weekend, that we really believe creating a movie with real action and real cars will be amazing stuff to people excited by seeing something real."

Fogelson consideres Fast Five "the transitional movie." The franchise has moved from Mexico and then Tokyo and now to Rio De Janeiro. The next bit of information may contain SPOILERS SO BEWARE!

"Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) plays a federal agent assigned to track down Paul Walker and the rest of the Fast team who sprung Vin Diesel from police custody. Now all the Fastguys are on the run, and will commit a crime, and Rock is right behind them. This movie again puts together most of the original cast plus some cast members from all of the prior four films. Fogelson says Johnson came to Universal seeking to become part of the franchise, and not only is he pivotal to the plot in Fast Fivepitted against Vin, but he also wants to appear in and be integral to the action in Fast Six."

Fogelson went on to talk about the transition the franchise has undergone:

"This franchise has undergone more interesting twists and turns than any franchise I know of. The first one was exciting because of the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic makeup of the cast, which drew over-indexes among Hispanics and Asians and African-American audiences. Then Vin went off doing other stuff, but the sequel still managed a $50M opening and became a mega-hit. Then Tokyo Drift was done for a lower price and it did far better internationally and less domestic. Most studios would have considered the franchise finished.

"But we went and got Vin to do a cameo. That last scene when audiences saw him was explosive. All of us sitting in that test screening in Chatsworth realized the franchise wasn't over. We said, 'Let's get started.' And so bringing in the original cast was a mega-win. So we went off to get the original players and the fourth pic opened to a humongous $71M. That was the first to open the first weekend in April. Before then, Fast has always always been a summer film. But now we had the highest opening weekend ever in April."

Universal is expecting to make $50 to $60 million opening weekend for Fast Five, which is actually a low ball number.  It opens on April 29th in the US and has already exceeded expectations overseas, where it's opened in a few territories already, but sequels do best internationally. Fogelson went on to mention the domestic test screenings:

"Based on screenings, this is the highest-testing movie in the franchise so far. But we've absolutely left perfect room for where we want to go with this franchise. I don't want to give away too much, but there are a lot of surprises at the end of Fast Five involving one of the biggest characters of the previous movies which will set up the franchise now as a series of heist action films."

I am extremely excited to see this film this weekend. As far as the change to heist films, I am all for it. If you go back to the first film the underlying story was about heists to an extent. Sign me up for more Fast and Furious films.

What are your thoughts?