Furious 7 wasn't just successful at the box office. It was one of the most successful films of all time at the box office, pulling in $392 million in its first weekend worldwide. With that level of success, you'd think the next film in the Fast & Furious franchise, Furious 8 (or whatever it ends up being titled... maybe 8 Fast 8 Furious?) would be a sure thing.
Amazingly, that's not quite the case. Screen Crush reports that the next installment in the franchise has been hit with a massive delay, and might not make it to theaters at all. The first issue, they note, is the tragic death of Paul Walker. Not only did this significantly delay the production of Furious 7, but it's certainly destroyed any sequel plans that Universal would have had for the series. Presumably, they would have been planning for sequels that included Walker's character, Brian O'Conner. Sadly, that's no longer the case.
Perhaps even more unfortunately, the next Fast & Furious film has no director. James Wan, who directed Furious 7, has another film already in his future- The Conjuring 2. Meanwhile, Justin Lin, the director of several previous Fast & Furious sequels and a franchise favorite, will be directing Star Trek 3. This leaves another unfortunate hole in Furious 8's production.
Screen Crush also notes quite a few smaller problems, like how most of the cast- Vin Diesel, Tyrese Gibson, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, just to name a few, but potentially Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Michelle Rodriguez- are done with their contracts and will need to renegotiate. There's also no script for the next film.
This is bad news for Furious 8, but it might not mean the end of the next Fast & Furious film. Originally, Universal had mentioned a plan to extend the franchise out to at least ten films. It seems unlikely they'll stray from that plan, so expect this to be less of a "cancellation" and more of a "delay." Which is fine by us- Furious 7 was pretty great, after all.
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