Shortly before The Fate of the Furious smashed box office records around the world, I landed an exclusive interview with screenwriter Chris Morgan. If you’re not aware, Morgan has written all the Fast and Furious movies since Tokyo Drift and has been a key component of the films and someone that’s helped shepherd a small movie about people stealing cars to one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood.

During our interview, Morgan talked about how he first got involved in the franchise, what it was like making Fast Five, the original ending of Furious 7, if a future sequel could go to outer space, how quickly they start making the next film after finishing the previous one, if they’ve started prepping Fast 9 and 10, Jason Statham's awesome third act action scene (and how it was originally written), and a lot more. In addition, with Morgan involved in other projects like the Universal monster movies, we talked about The Mummy, and how they’re hard at work on Bride of Frankenstein, Van Helsing, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Wolfman, Invisible Man, and so much more. Check out what he had to say below.

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Collider: Before we talk about The Fate of The Furious, you originally started on the franchise with Tokyo Drift.

CHRIS MORGAN: That’s right.

How did you originally pitch the movie at the time, and did you have any idea of where this franchise was gonna go?

MORGAN: Well, entering the second half first, no. But it was always kind of built into the DNA of it. If you don’t mind sticking with this for a moment, I’ll give you the shortest version of the Tokyo Drift story, which was I became aware of Tokyo Drift because there was a Fast and Furious sequel open writing assignment, so I kind of put together a take and I came in and I met with Universal Studios and Jeff Kirschenbaum, the executive there at the time. And I pitched a version of the movie, I brought in a laptop and I brought some videos and I said, “Hey, they’re doing this thing in Japan called drifting and it’s really cool. My idea for a story is Dominic Toretto learned that someone he cares about has been killed in Japan and he has to go there, and in order to solve the crime he has to get in there with these drifters and learn a new style of racing and this whole thing.”

So I pitched a big complicated thing like that, and they said, ‘Yeah, the drifting is cool but I don’t think we’re gonna get Vin [Diesel] back on this, this is smaller.’ The budget was so low, so low, and it was potentially a straight-to-DVD movie. So they were like, ‘Listen, I don’t think this is gonna work out, but thanks anyway.’ So I left, didn’t get the job, and like a week-and-a-half later I get a phone call from Kirschenbaum and he’s like, ‘Hey, man, what was that thing called drifting again? What was that? Would you come in and talk to me about that again?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ So I came back in and I re-pitched it and he said, ‘Well, really what we’d like to do is set it in high-school’ and I was like, ‘You know what? God bless you, I was terrible in high-school, I don’t think I can write high-school. Go ahead and have the idea, you can just take it and we’ll work on something else together down the road.’ I was just trying to kind of foster good will. And he was like, ‘No, no, no. You know what? You’re totally right you should do the Dominic Toretto version’ and I’m like, ‘Really? That’s awesome!’ So they hired me to write it, and back then you would do two steps. So I got my first step, which was my draft that I did, they read it and I got one note back from them –they would give you their notes and then you do a re-write- and it was, ‘Great! Now set it in high-school.’ That’s where Tokyo Drift became what it was.

When I originally came on to the franchise, I always kind of saw global, the crew, so it’s not as surprising. One of the things I love about the franchise as well is that these guys don’t have superpowers but they know everything about cars and they use their cars in very lateral-thinking sorts of ways, they solve any problems with their vehicles. So naturally when we shifted on Fast Five, we kind of had a little more like a heist idea, of course they would use cars to solve that. And then the last couple of movies have been more global, international stakes, of course they’re gonna jump out of airplanes and cars to solve the problem. It was always kind of in there, it’s just getting increasingly so, that’s all.

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Image via Universal Pictures

I figure the Fast and Furious franchise has literally done everything and gone everywhere, right?

MORGAN: Hardly, there’s always more to do.

Exactly, like go to outer space. So my question for you is: Do you have any plans in 9 or 10 to go to outer space? Because I figure that’s the final frontier.

MORGAN: Did they already leak the moon racing sequence to you? [laughs] No. You know, it’s funny, a lot of the fans will always comment and say there’s three things you can’t do in this franchise: You cannot go to space, you cannot do time travel, and you cannot have dinosaurs [laughs]. But I gotta tell you, part of my brain just wants to find that perfect story that incorporated some element of that which was so undeniable it was like, “No, no, it’s cool. You had to do it.” We’ll probably never … never say never, but it is highly unlikely we’ll do those three things.

Listen, all you need to do is have an Easter egg in movie 9…like a news report in the background showing, “Dinosaurs on the loose in Isla Nublar” and all of a sudden, Fast and Furious and Jurassic World, same universe.

MORGAN: Look, we already have Han’s last name in the franchise, it’s Seoul-Oh, so Han Solo, there you go.

I think fans would lose their minds. While Fast and Furious was fun, I feel like the franchise took a huge step forward with Fast Five, I love that movie. Do you remember where the idea came from, and also when you’re writing a script for something like that are you writing “massive car chase ensues” or are you being very descriptive with the action?

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Image via Universal Pictures

MORGAN: Definitely very descriptive. I kind of think in big set pieces, that’s just my default. I’m an adventure and action movie junkie, and that’s kind of the stuff that comes to me the easiest. So I love it, I love writing it, I love writing it out, it’s just kind of the exciting part of the job for me. I’m sorry, what was the first part of the question?

Do you remember where the idea for Fast Five came from?

MORGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It all kind of starts with character stuff, so the idea was at the end of the first movie –which I was a big fan of– you got Brian kind of giving his keys up to Dom to let him get away at the end of the movie. So this cop kind of has an outlaw heart, and in the fourth movie the way we ended that was we kind of let Brian make that choice of you know what? He is an outlaw, so let’s not do this pretend cop thing anymore, you are an outlaw. So then when we picked up at Fast Five the original conceit was a little bit of Burch and Sundance, they’re on the run, cops are closing in, the pressure is mounting, we learn that Mia is pregnant and they can’t keep running anymore, so what do you do? You’re gonna have to get out once and for all. How do you do it? You’re gonna pull off a big job. Who are you gonna pull it off on again? The big bad guy in this town who is doing all this bad sort of stuff. So it kind of just naturally became a heist story out of necessity for those guys and what they were going through. And then a bit more fun way for our dudes to pull off a heist and use their cars to drag the bank vault down through the city.

I think Fast Five is just so much fun.

MORGAN: Thanks, man. By the way, that was one of the most fun sequences to be on set for. Watching them actually drag a vault and actually smash it into things, that was awesome.

Talk a little bit about collaborating with the different directors on the franchise. How are they the same and how are they different?

MORGAN: It’s been a great experience. Every one of the directors has a different kind of perspective and a different thing they tend to focus on, things that are important to them. We’ve been really lucky to be able to work with Justin [Lin] –me in particular–, James [Wan], and [F.] Gary [Gray]. I would say for Justin, the thing that he would always really want to hit that was very, very important for him was theme, how do you distill the story of this movie down to one word? What is it about, specifically? And then every scene needs to inform that. He was very, very focused and very good about that. Then James was really into upping style, the choreography of the action, and that was one of his real, real strong suits, kind of just the tone and the atmosphere. And with Gary the thing that is by far the most important to him is performance, really trying to get a performance out of the actors that you haven’t seen before, and in every scene, that’s his thing. To me it’s been kind of a pleasure to be able to work alongside these guys and have the conversations and just see how they do their filmmaking though their particular point of view.

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Image via Universal Pictures

With Furious 7, you guys did the impossible, you made a great movie that also honored Paul Walker. I know the original ending was going to open the world of Fast and the Furious a bit more, can you talk a little bit about what you had originally written and perhaps how that ending factored into The Fate of the Furious’ ending?

MORGAN: Well, the original ending, if I remember correctly, was our guys end up solving the problem and then kind of becoming—again, going more outlaw, it was sort of a happier ending that kind of ends with the insinuation that they were gonna go off onto this heist or this job. But the core issue for Brian, Paul’s character, was this kind of ‘Who am I?’ sort of question. He’s a guy who used to be a cop and in the thick of the action and a racer, and all this stuff, and now he has an amazing wife, a kid and another one on the way. Then he starts to look at his life and it’s not a midlife crisis but to say—we said it in the movie, ‘I miss the bullets, I miss the action’ and the point of the adventure was to show by the end of it that the thing that’s truly important to him is his family and being there. It wouldn’t mean that he has to stop those adventures or those things, but the context is just a little bit different, he has a different understanding of who he is at his core and what’s most important in life.

Then the tragedy with Paul happened halfway through our shooting. We had him in a lot of the action stuff and not a lot of the dramatic sequences, and so those were gonna be impossible to get. Then we had the question of like—there was a real moment where not only were we all just emotionally devastated, but there was a real question of is it even possible to finish. There was a beat where we were actually all just thinking about just shutting it down and not going on with it, but we took a little time and everyone had a chance to grieve. Then we all started thinking about it and I started specifically thinking about, ‘How do we build that story? What do we have with Paul?’ and really for me it was about, ‘Can we give the audience a cathartic experience to say goodbye? Can we do something that is worthy of Paul that he would appreciate?’ So it really kind of came down to that last sequence, so I just ended up writing it out and I took it into the studio and I was like, ‘This is what I think the end of the movie is’ and they loved it and the studio loved it. That was the moment when we all agreed, ‘We need to do this.’

In regards to the story, the story actually kind of was the same. The only difference is that whereas we let Brian and Mia and their family kind of go off to just be a family and drop the action-y elements of their lives and stop risking everything when family is so important to them, otherwise we would’ve just kind of continued with Brian learning and adjusting his character a little bit.

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Image via Universal Pictures

In terms of this movie, with that ending we really just wanted to touch, for the audience as well as for the characters, the issue of Brian and the issue of Paul and specifically –Spoilers, so you’re gonna have to figure out how you say this or don’t say this, but what the characters go through in this movie is super dramatic, basically their entire world gets shattered. The guy who is their father figure, their brother, their husband, who’s taught them their moral code, suddenly betrays it all, goes rogue, goes against them, and it becomes a real question of faith. So, do you guys just fall apart? Do you stick together? It’s so dramatic for the characters that at some point they would definitely turn to each other and say, “Oh my god, we gotta tell Brian, we gotta tell Mia. Something is going on with Dom, we don’t know what it is” So I think from a practical point of view for the characters you needed to address it. For the audience, and just as a fan as the writer on it, I also wanted to have one moment where we were able to –specifically at the beat at the end of the film– say to the audience, “We’re thinking of him too” in a respectful sort of way.

I guess what I was saying is that with Furious 7…I was wondering if you guys at the end of the movie were sort of thinking of expanding the world and setting up the future movies or not really so much.

MORGAN: Yeah. In the end of the movie we were kind of just leaning into kind of a different sort of adventure, but then with what happened to Paul, once that film came out and it did well and it was great, it could’ve been the end of the franchise. We actually where thinking there for a minute, ‘Maybe we just leave this, go out on a good note and leave it alone’ and we all kind of made an agreement to say that we wouldn’t revisit this unless we had a story that did something dramatically different, that was worthy of being done. We did seven movies where it’s basically Dom kind of holding the family together and working together and solving a problem, so we started thinking about it and I came up the idea of like, ‘Well, what if we do the thing that’s the most forbidden thing of the franchise? What if Dom goes dark, what if he’s our bad guy? What would the family do?’ So I ended up calling the studio and talking to Neal Moritz and talking to Vin, and they immediately were like, ‘Now that’s interesting, There’s something there.’ I think what happened was Paul in the last film may have driven the thought process to what this story is. I think there’s actually an interesting thematic similarity in the story of this film, for the team but particularly for Letty, which is loss. They lose the foundation of their lives, they lose Dom, they don’t understand it, they don’t know why, and it’s very emotional. There’s a little bit of that that we get to address with the audience with, ‘Look, we’re doing the franchise now and Paul’s not with us, so we’re feeling a little bit of loss and it is scary and the foundations will shake’ So what’s the answer to that? And I think this movie gives a good cathartic sort of lesson of how to deal with grief and loss and the main thing is to stay through it and at the other side of it you can be stronger and you can kind of find the joy.

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Image via Universal Pictures

Over the past few Fast and Furious films, it seems like they come out every other year, in fact, I’m pretty sure they do. How soon are you working on the next script after you wrap on the last one?

MORGAN: It’ll depend. It’ll depend on when the studio officially decides, “Ok we’re going again. Let’s go.” But during production of each movie we’re always thinking about what the next one could be, particularly Vin and I. We tend to –It’s no secret that Vin is a big D&D guy and so am I, and we kind of look at the franchise kind of like the way someone would run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Every movie is like a challenge for the characters and if they solve the plot then they kind of level-up emotionally in some way. So we’re always thinking about it in the greater kind of saga and the greater mythology, so we’re always working on it. When I actually physically start writing it is when the studio comes in and says, “Alright go. We have a date and got this and now we’re going.”

I’m surprised you and Vin haven’t gone in and tried to pitch a D&D movie.

MORGAN: You know we’ve talked about it a lot, a lot [laughs]. You never know, the future may have it. It always comes down to where the rights are at in that particular time, buy god I’d love to. I would love it.

Vin has talked about how this is the beginning of the final trilogy, and without going into specific spoilers of the story, the ending of the movie sets up what could be an antagonist for the final two. Was that always the intention?

MORGAN: Yeah. We were looking to do this as a trilogy. The things we set up in 8 are gonna pay off in 9 and 10, and I think that would be a very fair estimation.

So without going into specifically mentioning the actor, when that actor signed on, did they realize they were signing on for a trilogy, was that part of the discussion?

MORGAN: We’d talked about bigger mythology and kind of where the character will go. It’s always kind of bigger discussions but we set out from the beginning to do 8,9, and 10 so that’s how we’re designing it.

So I definitely have to ask you, have you even started writing or outlining 9 and 10, or is it something where you gotta wait for the studio to sort of give a green light?

MORGAN: Yeah, it’s pretty much that. Again, Vin and I have always kind of worked on it, we’re always thinking forward, fractioning ideas around and outlining things, but I’m not writing on it just yet, no.

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Image via Universal

From when you started writing The Fate of the Furious to what people see on screen did anything dramatic happen in terms of the way the story was? Did you have an original idea that just got tossed out the window? Or do you sort of lay out kind of like a wireframe, if you will, of the story and that’s pretty much what got put on screen?

MORGAN: It depends. I always kind of lay out kind of like an outline skeleton of the story and then we all go over it together and things will change at that point. This one was pretty similar, we had a few things that changed from what you see on the film, nothing gigantic, but like Cipher had a very different personal backstory. The way we bring in Helen [Mirren] came in specifically from a meeting that Vin and I and Gary did in the Dominican Republic for a few days and just kind of sat and broke story. The Berlin sequence originally was much bigger, but we always run into that kind of stuff where it’s that we’re always limited to a certain amount of time, a two-hour film, and the budget. In fact, even on Fast & Furious 6, the jet scene was originally going to be the end of Fast Five [laughs], and then we just ran out of money and time and space and kind of booted it off to the next film.

One of the things I love about the franchise is Hobbs and Dominic at this point could probably take on Captain America and win, they’re preposterously strong. Do you remember when it happened that they jumped to like another level in strength and stamina?

MORGAN: I think it’s just kind of always been that way. I’ll tell you, the one moment that stood out which was kind of a fun moment for me was on 7 when Dom and Brian go to steal the Lykan hypercar and Brian’s gotta get under it and then Dom just reaches down and lifts it. I remember when we were at the story meeting and they were like, “Wait, wait, wait. So he just lifts the car?” and I’m like, “Yeah” [laughs] and they were like, “Wait, wait, wait. What kind of engine is it? It’s got to be really heavy” and I’m like, “Dom is made of iron, he just does it” [laughs] and that’s just the way we went with it. Maybe it is a rear engine, maybe it’s not that heavy, and maybe it’s possible, maybe. I think that guy is just so determined he’d just go for it. And then Hobbs, I mean, talk about the strongest guy in the universe, he can do whatever he wants to do.

The thing is though, in any other movie, what they do people would just ridicule it. But in the Fast and Furious franchise people are clapping along and having like the greatest time.

MORGAN: Yeah [laughs]. Again, I think it’s that blurry line of heightened reality that it’s fun and we don’t break it so badly that it pulls you out of it, but it’s also part of the fun of it too.

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Image via Universal Pictures

I love the action set piece in the third act with Jason Statham. How did that come together and how much of that is improvised in the moment?

MORGAN: Well, that sequence wasn’t improvised. We always kind of design action sequences…You’re talking about on the airplane?

Yeah.

MORGAN: That was always kind of plotted out. Now, the one big difference was –spoilers– originally the action that was written called for him to fight his way to the airplane to get to the baby and then that’s where the sequence ended. But as we got close to production it just nagged at me that it just felt like we’ve seen a guy fighting through a lot of guys a lot though it would be cool for sure. So then I went to Jason and was like, “Listen man, I have an idea about the set piece” and he’s like, “Ok, what is it?” and I’m like, “We should just start with the baby, you start there, and then you gotta fight your way through with the baby. He puts the baby in a baby carrier and you gotta do your mean gunfight.” And at first everyone was very incredulent, “It’s a tone issue, I don’t know. Is that gonna look silly?” and I was very pationate about it and just kept fighting for it and I’m like, “No, no, no. You can put his character in it, he can talk with the baby while he’s doing it” “No, but won’t that be silly?” “No, I think if we do it the right way and we don’t overdo it, this can actually be very endearing, it can be really fun.” Then we got Jason on board. It was very interesting, the second he actually started to play with it and see the moment, like there was a fun line in there and he just grasped on to it, he was like, “Yeah we’re doing that.” So then we just wrote it out and everyone –Once you saw it, it was undeniable. It was such a better choice to go with, it’s a really fun sequence, so I’m glad we ended up doing it that way.

It’s a great sequence, and when I saw it the whole theater was having a blast with it.

MORGAN: Oh good. It was fun, that was one of the best days on set because between every take like Jason would come off and be like laughing. It was so fun, so fun.

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Image via Universal Pictures

I’m gonna switch gears a little bit. You’re involved in the monster movies at Universal, The Mummy looks like it’s gonna be a lot of fun. What is it about these upcoming monster movies that will excite moviegoers?

MORGAN: I’m a massive fan of the monster movies, again, I also grew up on the monster films. Actually, the first one I remember seeing was The Mummy. I remember when I was a young kid they had a pre-monster movie showing at the local library, I was really young, but I went to go and sneak in to watch one of the movies and of course I opened the doors right as Boris Karloff is getting mummified alive and it horrified me, horrified me. I just kind of stopped and I stood there and walked out of the theater. It actually troubled me, I’d never seen anything like that before and I waited outside for about 60 seconds and then was like, “Well, I gotta know what happens next” and went back in [laughs] and watched the rest of it. I loved it ever since.

I think why people will love these monster films is the they are an homage to the originals, which means you’re gonna get complex characters. And the thing that I think is interesting about monsters is that they are always exaggerations of human attributes or human fears. For example, Frankenstein was a result of the kind of industrial and scientific revolution—are we playing God? Should we be playing God? And with the Wolfman there’s that worry of what happens if I lose control? What happens if I hurt the things around me that I love? There’s very human questions and worries and fears and darkness and cravings.

We live in a world of superhero movies now—and by the way, I love them and I see them all and I have a great time, but I can’t identify with them as closely as I want to because I know I’ll never be perfect like that. Whereas the monster movies are saying that everybody has darkness in them, everyone has secrets and things they are ashamed of and don’t want to say or something that feels monstrous and dangerous about them. We’re just kind of embracing that and saying, ‘That’s ok.’ The films are just gonna be interesting, emotional, action-y, largely global sorts of films. I think The Mummy trailer sets up, in a really good way, kind of the tone of these films.

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Image via Universal Pictures

I know that you’re writing one of them, but you’re also producing a number of them. Have you guys figured out what the order of the movies are after Mummy, or is it one of these things where you guys are waiting or is the studio waiting for The Mummy to come out to figure out what the audience likes, what really was important to them, and where to go next?

MORGAN: We kind of designed them all to be kind of standalone sorts of franchises that have kind of similar things between them. And as the scripts came in, then we started putting them in a, ‘Well this would be a good order. We reveal this here’ so now it really comes down to, again, it’s a studio decision on which film is coming out next. Just with all the films we’re working on, Bride of Frankenstein, Van Helsing, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Wolfman, Invisible Man, and on and on and on, it’s a real embarrassment of riches in terms of awesome, fun characters. I always say it this way: I’m in my office right now and I’ve got a Werewolf head mounted on the wall. It’s pretty good to come into your office and—that’s what you’re working with, you’re working with monsters that are 80, almost 100 years old. There’s a real legacy, a real respect, the fact that this studio, I don’t think, would have lasted if it wasn’t for the monsters, it really built up.

I’ve seen a number of clips from Mummy and I think it’s really cool who Russell Crowe is playing in the movie, and I think that his character could sort of cross over or be connective tissue to other things.

MORGAN: There is definitely connective tissue there for the take. Again, our biggest focus is to do each one of these movies with as much care and just make them as good as possible. They are characters that are interesting, that are worth the time and effort, and they should be excellent. That’s our focus, we have something very precious that people care quite a lot about and so we really wanna be respectful of that and just do good work with it.

Do you or the studio envision all these movies will be in essence modern day, or is there a chance that some of these could go backwards in time and touch on different time periods?

MORGAN: I think it’s all possible. The studio is mostly interested in just doing good films. They would like them generally to be more contemporary I think, just to reflect a modern sensibility and a modern take on the monsters. The Mummy is one of the first modern day—for Universal anyway—Mummy films; all the others are period. But there are no rules, so if there is a great period version of these that’s just undeniable, then we’ll absolutely fight for that and go for it.

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Image via Universal

Right now, a number of R-rated movies have done very, very well and so you wonder, how much has the success of Deadpool, Logan, of R-rated movies making real money at the box office possibly factored into when you’re sitting down and talking to executives about the tone and the level of violence you can portray in some of these movies, does that come up at all now, is it a different conversation?

MORGAN: It does come up. I don’t want to say it’s a different conversation, because it’s not really, we’ve always taken the approach of writing it for the way that it’s right and then we can always scale up and down for rating if that became a concern. But let’s just do the best story, just show us what the best story is and we can deal with that later. I mean, I think specially with Logan and Deadpool, those are great examples for [the R-rating], they make a real case for there being flexibility in the rating more than there ever was. So, again, just tonally right for the story that you want to tell and let’s deal with that later.

I am curious about what happened with Legend of Conan, is that something that’s just frozen or does it have any sort of life in it, what can you tell people?

MORGAN: Conan will always have life in it, not for us unfortunately. We put together a great, great story –I’m the biggest fan of the [John] Milius Conan film, a lot of people make fun of it but I think it’s the smartest script, I think it’s a great performance, I love the story. It actually has something to say about what it is to be a man and a warrior, what’s worth fighting for and what’s not, I’ve always loved it. To me there’s only been one Conan movie and it’s that one, there’s never been anything else. So our idea was to literally pick that movie up but 30 years later and kind of do a version of Unforgiven, where there’s something going on and Conan is not the strongest guy he used to be, he’s not the legend he used to be; he’s and old, broken guy. And this thing comes down to where now he’s got to find a reason to go on and find a different way to fight other than just with strength. It was a great movie that just gave validation to even at the end of someone’s life there’s real value to them. I don’t know, it was so great, Arnold [Schwarzenegger] loved it. I think at the end of the day it was just probably too expensive, too big, and to the studio ultimately it wasn’t in the cards for them. So now it’s kind of out and I think they’re looking elsewhere to do like a TV show or something else with it. But that was my interest, just to tell that one story, but you never know, we’ll see what happens.

I think you had a smart play on what to do picking it up 30 years later and making it an Unforgiven type thing, I think that the smart play. I wonder what would’ve happened if Schwarzenegger was a bigger box office draw now than he is, if it was something that would’ve been greenlit. But you know the economics of it.

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Image via Universal

MORGAN: Frankly I wouldn’t have been interested if it was anyone but him, I don’t think that story would have been the same and I don’t think it would’ve had the importance for me that it did. So that’s not something I ever would have pitched or backed.

The Fate of the Furious is now in theaters.