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'The Fate Of The Furious' New York Premiere - Outside Arrivals

Source: Donna Ward / Getty

Since the release of The Fast and the Furious exactly 20 years ago, the Fast & Furious franchise has entertained audiences around the world with tales of fantastical heists, its ragtag band of bandits driving all kinds of souped-up cars, and the bond of family. Last October, Deadline broke the story that director Justin Lin signed on to film the last two movies in the main F&F arc. This weekend, Vin Diesel, who has played protagonist Dominic Toretto, confirmed to the Associated Press that the main F&F storyline would likely wrap up by 2024.

F9 is scheduled for a stateside release on June 25 but has already been a success internationally, pushing the franchise past the $6-billion mark per ScreenRant. According to Diesel, the coda to F&F will be a two-part setup where the first movie drops in 2023, and the conclusion comes out in the following year. “I know people are going to feel like it doesn’t have to end, but I think all good things should,” he said. “There are reasons for a finale. I think this franchise has deserved it.”

This news doesn’t necessarily spell the end for franchise spinoffs, however. “We’ve written out storylines for various characters,” Diesel told Variety in 2015. “We’ve been playing with [the idea of spinoffs] for a long time. It’s a very rich property, and we’re committed to treating it with a lot of class.” Four years later, Hobbs & Shaw was released and had the second-highest opening weekend of 2019 behind Avengers: Endgame.

Lin, who directed the franchise’s films from Tokyo Drift through Fast & Furious 6 and then returned for F9, shared with the AP how Diesel envisioned closing out the saga. “[F9] is kind of the first film of the final chapter,” he said. “We’re kind of reconfiguring everything, so that the next two movies should wrap up this amazing journey for these characters.”

“The world just championed this underdog to a place where it has already surpassed all of these other franchises,” Diesel said. “But the franchise has a soul, and that soul has to rest.”

Fast & Furious Star Vin Diesel Knows When The Franchise’s Curtain Will Close  was originally published on cassiuslife.com