With the latest movie in the Furious franchise,
Fast Five hitting U.S. cinemas on Friday (our review
HERE), The Onion's morning show
Today Now! took time out to talk to the film's five year old screenwriter
Chris Morgan about what he likes about the series, how he came up with the probable Oscar winning premise behind his latest flick and how the sixth film will be more of a heist film. Its a fascinating interview and a great insight into action movie screenwriting. Take a look;
Today Now! Interviews The 5-Year-Old Screenwriter Of "Fast Five" Great Stuff. Ok, time to get serious now and it's becoming clear that the latest film in the wildly successful Fast and Furious franchise, Fast Five, is supposed to act as a transitional movie, with the franchise moving the emphasis away from the strictly vehicular based mayhem towards a more mainstream action movie, more specifically a heist movie set up.
Deadline recently had a chance to sit down with Universal chairman
Adam Fogelson who elaborated on the ideas the studio,
Vin Diesel and co. had in mind for a genre shake-up for
Fast Six;
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? Weve heard so many people say, Ive never seen one, and Ive 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. Our strategy behind one of the biggest bets weve 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.
It's a very wise move, as suddenly you are more or less talking about a brand new franchise that can attract a new audience, but with an already built in fan base. The legwork is already done and you are good to go for at least another three movies. And with
Dwayne Johnson joining the cast, expect to see him sticking around too. But maybe not director
Justin Lin who is attempting to get his proposal for
a fifth Terminator movie starring
Arnold Schwarzenegger off the ground right now. What do you make of this new development. Is ditching the vehicular action for more conventional genre fare a good idea by the time a sixth film comes along?