The Fast & Furious franchise has a new man at the helm of the ship. Louis Leterrier - perhaps best known for his work on the Transporter franchise (which sees him reunite with Jason Statham) and Now You See Me, as well as a quick sojourn into the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk, took on the somewhat unenviable task of stepping into the shoes of Justin Lin, the most successful director of the franchise, for Fast X, the tenth installment of the series.
Lin revitalised the series from a street racing syndicate series to James Bond for the YouTube generation by combining fast cars with set pieces that Tom Cruise would roll his eyes at due to their disputes with the laws of physics. But audiences lapped it up, with the franchise exploding into multi-billion dollar success story for Universal. However, Lin stepped away from the project a day after shooting began, which left Universal and series figurehead Vin Diesel scrambling for a replacement, a move which saw them send a script over in the dead of night to the director who was asleep in Paris. An unbelievable opportunity, Leterrier admitted to Esquire Middle East.
But Leterrier revealed that he came very close to turning down the project the more real it became, citing the sheer mass of the project as being potentially unmanageable. "I was on my way, and between the time I said yes and I arrived, the massive weight of what I just said yes to fell on my shoulders and I got really, really scared," said Leterrier. "It got to the point where I was like, no, I cannot do it. I cannot step onto a franchise that I admire and respect that is so obviously complicated—when you see the scope of it, the technicality of it, and more. The Fast & Furious franchise is not just one storyline, it’s 10 storylines that you have to weave and balance and do all that stuff."
Louis Leterrier Had to Rewrite The Script on The Way to Set
However, once he met with Diesel and the rest of the Fast family, his concerns eased and he was glad to take on the role - until he was on a flight to the set, and was told he had to rewrite the entire third act at a moment's notice.
I read the script four times on the plane, and I said I had some ideas, and they said ‘great, because the whole third act is changing. Can you rewrite it tonight?’ I was literally on no sleep. I’d been on no sleep for days. Obviously, this was not going to be set in stone. But I was like, ‘okay, yeah, I’ve got some ideas,’ and started writing. And obviously, since the third act was changing, I needed to change the first act. And when you rewrite the third act, and the first act, the second act has to go. So basically I had to on the fly rebuild the airplane.
The trailer for Fast X dropped today. You can check it out below. The movie opens in theaters on May 19, 2023.