Fast & Furious 12 May Return Franchise To Its LA Roots

Summary

• Fast & Furious 12
  will return the
  Fast & Furious
  franchise to its earliest state.
• The franchise may return to its roots and lower stakes, potentially shifting the focus back to an ”
  intimate
  ” setting in Los Angeles.
• NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman hints at a possible pivot towards a more personal and street-centered storyline in future films.

Fast & Furious 12 will be bringing the Fast & Furious franchise back to its roots. The franchise began in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious and spawned numerous other movies in the two decades since, including the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw. Multiple standalone projects are slated for the future, but the most prominent is the Fast X sequel, which will be the eleventh mainline movie. The impressive franchise has earned over $7.5 billion worldwide on a combined budget of $1.75 billion.

While it has been extremely successful, the studio is looking to change Fast & Furious. In an interview with Variety, NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman and Chief Content Officer Donna Langley indicated that the franchise may lower its stakes after Fast 11. Langley hinted that the franchise may return to Los Angeles to return to an “intimate” setting with fewer world-ending threats. The decision does not appear to have been fully made, especially as the Fast X follow-up is still in development and is likely to be released in summer 2026. Check out her full quote below:

Where we go next is a question. We may pivot another time and bring it back to the streets of L.A. and maybe make it a more intimate story.

Fast & Furious Has Drifted Far From Its Roots

A Return To Street Racing Could Decrease The Stakes

The Fast & Furious saga has experienced significant changes over the years. When The Fast And The Furious was released, the franchise revolved around street racing and the journey of an undercover police officer. 2009’s Fast & Furious, the fourth movie, was the moment when Fast & Furious changed completely, as it began to focus on action, rather than racing. Fast Five featured numerous stunts that continued the slow development from a racing series to an action-packed thriller franchise.

Change is necessary for the franchise, because it has been slowly declining when considering worldwide gross. While the budget has been steadily increasing, the profits have gradually declined. It peaked with Furious 7, which earned $1.5 billion, and those profits decreased over time. The most recent movie, Fast X ended its run at $715 million, despite having an immense budget of $340 million. The action-packed movies require large budgets, meaning that profits are more difficult to achieve. With such a high budget, Fast X failed to achieve profitability, given that Hollywood movies need 2.5x their budget to succeed.

To return to the profitability of earlier movies, the franchise would need to shrink budgets and focus more on racing and cars, rather than stuntwork. Since Fast X, the movies have been closer to Mission Impossible than Tokyo Drift. The cars do often play significant roles in the stunts, but the title now refers more to the characters than to the vehicles. A long-term return to Los Angeles would help to ground the movies again. It would represent a much-needed return to the oldest chronological Fast & Furious movies.

Source: Variety