Gifted with the keys to one of the biggest franchises in the world and what would become reportedly the most expensive movie ever made, “Fast X” director Justin Lin shocked the film community when just days after the tenth movie in the “Fast & Furious” franchise began production, he amicably left the project over reported “creative differences.”
A new unathorized book, “Welcome to the Family,” documents the history of Universal’s “Fast & Furious” franchise and dives deeper into “Fast X’s” ballooning cast, an ever-changing script, a disagreement over a cliffhanger twist, and a CGI-heavy climax that led Lin to ultimately walk away. Author Barry Hertz’s book alleges it was Lin who chose to exit the project, not the studio who forced him out, leading him to be replaced with “Transporter” director Louis Leterrier and for Lin to go back to his indie roots with his subsequent film, “Last Days.”
IndieWire shares an exclusive excerpt from Hertz’s book below, chronicling the events that led up to Lin’s departure. The book will be released by Grand Central on Tuesday, November 25.
Justin Lin had a plan. The COVID-19 pandemic was grinding on, and the filmmaker was patiently waiting for Universal to push “F9” out into the world. With too much time on his never-idle hands, he started to sketch out ideas for that film’s grand follow-up, intended to be a two-part capper to the entire saga. Two or three days a week, he would hop on Zoom calls with screenwriter Alfredo Botello, producer Jeff “Kirsch” Kirschenbaum, and Universal exec Jay Polidoro to hash out the big themes of what would become “Fast X.” The meetings were initially slow going, but the team ended up zeroing in on a few key ideas, including the notion of consequences. What if Dom and his crew were forced to reckon with the actions of their globally destructive missions — all the wreckage, both physical and emotional, they had left in their wake?
“Some of the big ideas that we explored was that the world would put the family on trial in a way — that some small bit of collateral damage would come back to haunt them,” says Botello. “There was going to be some subversion. Plus, Dom’s older, he’s a dad. What does it mean when the past catches up with you, and now maybe your kid’s life is on the line? What does that do to you as a badass, this thief-slash-spy-slash-swashbuckler?”
Slowly, the conversation developed into revisiting the franchise’s biggest and still greatest achievement: “Fast Five.” Opening with a flashback to the crew’s Rio de Janeiro vault heist, “Fast X” would introduce its new antagonist by looking at Dom and Brian’s big score from the perspective of a heretofore unknown player: Dante Reyes, the sociopathic son of slain Brazilian drug lord Hernan. After biding his time for years, Dante would frame Dom and his crew as global terrorists, making them publicly suffer for their past sins—while holding the life of Little Brian over Dom’s head.
“Justin has this general outlook on life, which is that the incidental person in the room is the one who you really have to worry about — you don’t know them yet, but they might one day become your biggest nemesis or your biggest ally,” says Botello. “In this case, it was coming back to the big death in ‘Fast Five’ and how that comes back to bite you in the ass. That bad guy is gone, but oh, wait, he has a kid. And now Dom has a kid, too.”
As the pandemic stretched on, Botello left to work on his own projects, while “F9” cowriter Daniel Casey also became preoccupied, selling a supernatural Western script to J.J. Abrams’s company. While longtime Fast screenwriter Chris Morgan would ultimately receive an executive-producer credit on “Fast X,” Lin wanted to go his own way this time and enlisted writer Dan Mazeau, who was coming off the underrated Millie Bobby Brown fantasy “Damsel,” which was produced by Kirsch and Joe Roth. As “Fast X’s” storyline evolved, bringing Jakob back as a badass uncle for Little B, adding both a new antagonist (Alan Ritchson’s Aimes) and a new ally (Brie Larson’s Tess) inside Mr. Nobody’s secret government agency, Lin turned to his 24/7 brain trust at Perfect Storm to dream up the extravagant set pieces and their exotic international locales. As usual, there were more gonzo ideas pitched than could ever be feasibly executed.
“One sequence that we’ve been trying to fit into every one of the ‘Fast’ movies was to have a giant digging or boring drill that the crew is chasing — it’s digging into a city’s underground, then coming back up. At one point, that was going to be the big finale for ten,” recalls associate producer Josh Henson, who stayed on “Fast X” during the earliest stages of preproduction until he left to join Taylor Sheridan’s production company (“Yellowstone,” “Mayor of Kingstown”). “I also had this idea I’d been pitching for years called the ‘shitty car sequence’ — I want to see Dom and the crew driving beat-up Pintos and Toyota Camrys and using those to pull off something amazing.”
While a few elements of the “Fast X” script stayed consistent throughout development — including the notion of a cliffhanger ending — everything else was in a constant, disorienting state of flux, even more so than usual. At one point, the script prominently featured Hobbs, with the story climaxing in the destruction of Rio. There was also a gigantic “battle royale” in which Hobbs and Shaw faced off against Dom and Jakob. There were discussions about bringing back the “Tokyo Drift” boys. Vietnam was once in play as a location. And most outrageously, at one point Dante assembles what an early script refers to as “our Legion of Doom,” in which Cole Hauser’s Carter Verone (“2 Fast”), Laz Alonso’s Fenix (“Fast 4”), Joe Taslim’s Jah (“Fast 6), Ronda Rousey’s Kara (“Furious 7″), and various other Toretto enemies return to seek collective revenge”: “That’s the best thing about you, Dom,” Dante says in the abandoned draft. “Only thing you got more of than family — is enemies.” In and out, up and down — opinions on and changes to the script came from every direction.
All the while, casting plowed ahead as Universal was once again dead set on meeting an ambitious release date: spring 2023. But the high-wattage ensemble kept growing until it ballooned to nearly unsustainable levels. Somehow, the story had to incorporate not only the regular Toretto crew but also such franchise latecomers as Jakob, Cipher, Deckard and Queenie Shaw, Little Nobody, Stasiuk, and more. And then there were the new players, starting with Jason Momoa as Dante, Daniela Melchior as the younger sister of Dom’s long-lost Rio love Elena (making her Little B’s aunt), plus Larson and Ritchson as two dueling forces in Mr. Nobody’s black-ops agency. There were now more marquee-level names than ever before, each coming with their own deals, demands, and multiplex-sized egos. Before a single frame of footage was shot, far more than $100 million had been spent on signing all the above-the-line talent.
“They say yes to all these actors, and they all come with their own assistants and their own flights and their own trailers, and it’s this insane amount of money,” recalls production designer Jan Roelfs, returning to “F9” after working with Lin on “F6.” “But the biggest stars are also often the easiest to work with. Charlize Theron, she’s amazing. She’s like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep: They just show up and work. They come on time, they’re ready, they know their lines. Other people, they get there, and they don’t know what they want. ‘Okay, let’s discuss it for the next five hours in your trailer.’”
Behind the scenes, Lin was busy assembling his usual behind-the-scenes all-stars: cinematographer Stephen F. Windon; Spiro Razatos and the Gill brothers, Jack and Andy, on second unit; editors Dylan Highsmith and Kelly Matsumoto; previz supervisor Alex Vegh; costume designer Sanja Milkovic Hays; VFX supervisor Peter Chiang. Almost everyone was back, eager to bring Lin’s vision to life and give the Fast-verse the kick-ass penultimate chapter that it so richly deserved.
“Justin said to me that he wanted all of the threads of the pictures he directed to tie together and build to a climax — he was so familiar with the character arcs that it made sense that he was the person doing this, to culminate it all,” recalls Chiang. “He’s always thinking ahead.” Principal photography kicked off in April 2022 at Leavesden Studios just outside London, with the production taking over seven massive soundstages. First up, Lin tackled two fight scenes involving Theron — one in which her villainous terrorist Cipher faces off against Momoa’s Dante and an army of henchmen, another in which she goes toe to toe with Rodriguez’s Letty. Timing was tight and the pressure was on, as Theron only had a limited window in her schedule before she had to go to film another project. Everything seemed to be going smoothly enough. Then, on Friday, April 22, Diesel posted a nineteen-second Instagram video featuring himself sidling up to Lin.
“What do you think, Justin?” Diesel says to the camera, mugging behind his trademark dark shades.
“Week one, just finished week one,” Lin replies a little too flatly.
“How does it feel?” Diesel implores.
“Feels like the beginning of an epic, uh, ending.”
“Is it fair to say this will be the best one?”
“In my heart…yes,” Lin says, all but shrugging his shoulders.
Immediately after the clip went online, fans pointed out that the footage resembled a darkly comic hostage video: Lin’s eyes appeared to be screaming to the camera, “Help!” while the oblivious Diesel kept rolling. Yet according to those on set, Lin spent his first three days of shooting in high spirits.
“We shot on a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and it was all Charlize and Jason. I remember that Friday night, I saw Justin and he was the happiest I’d ever seen. He was delighted with the way it was going—he loved the chemistry between Charlize and Jason,” recalls cinematographer Windon. “And then, whatever happened, it happened over that weekend. And I never saw him after that.”
On Tuesday, April 26, Lin shocked the “Fast” family — and the global film industry at large — by announcing that he was leaving the movie. In an anodyne statement released via “Fast’s” official social media channels, he wrote:
With the support of Universal, I have made the difficult decision to step back as director of “FAST X,” while remaining with the project as a producer. Over 10 years and five films, we have been able to shoot the best actors, the best stunts, and the best damn car chases. On a personal note, as the child of Asian immigrants, I am proud of helping to build the most diverse franchise in movie history. I will forever be grateful to the amazing cast, crew and studio for their support, and for welcoming me into the “FAST” family.
Immediately, the set plunged into a deeply confusing swirl of juicy gossip and high anxiety. “I spoke to him on the phone the day he left the movie — he called me and Vincent Lascoumes, his assistant director— and he just kept saying that his health was more important than the movie,” says Windon. “Something obviously had been cooking. On the Friday night before, he was so happy.”
According to several high-level sources in the production, Lin had hit his breaking point over the steadily increasing creative tensions with Diesel, as well as difficulties with the star’s sister/producer, Samantha Vincent, who often acted as Diesel’s emissary. A key source of discord centered around the script and its ending. While a cliffhanger was always part of the “Fast X” plan, several drafts of the screenplay also hinged on a jaw-dropping twist in which Dante is revealed to be the true father of Little Brian. Some members of the film’s team felt that the late-game turn was the perfect, if deeply dark, way for Dom to reckon with the concept he held most dear: family. The proud patriarch of the “Fast” clan would have to put his life on the line for a child who wasn’t biologically his own — who was in fact the offspring of his most feared nemesis. Others, including Diesel, felt differently.
Universal was said to be extremely hands on during the entire process, and reportedly also not keen on Lin’s vision for the final action set-piece, an especially over-the-top sequence that involved Dante using a giant excavator-like machine to wreak havoc — a VFX-heavy climax that would drive up the cost of a project whose production budget was already well north of $300 million and climbing, making “Fast X” one of the most expensive movies ever made.
“It was really the ending that needed work — it’s difficult to describe, but this machine eats things…the bad guy goes down, gets into this machine, comes out and starts eating cars, and it’s like a ‘Transformers’ movie. It was totally out of context with the movie, I thought,” says Alexander Witt, a veteran second-unit director and cinematographer (“Gladiator,” “Casino Royale,” “Skyfall”) who was now back in the “Fast” franchise after overseeing “Fast Five’s” train heist. “I thought it was a little too Marvel, and the problem was it would have been all CG. Although we ended up with all CG in the end. From the moment that Dom jumps over the dam [in the final film], it’s all CG.”
After a heated closed-door meeting on Saturday, April 23, Lin reached his limit, threw up his hands, and quit. His departure was unprecedented. While Hollywood history is littered with movies that lost their directors midway through shooting — think of Bryan Singer leaving “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Phil Lord and Christopher Miller exiting the Han Solo movie, or way back to when George Cukor was swept off “Gone with the Wind” — those were all cases in which the studio and producers fired the filmmakers. Here, it was the director who was saying enough is enough.
For the “Fast X” crew, many of whom had worked with Lin since “Tokyo Drift,” it was a devastating blow. “Obviously, it was a big shock. I was nervous, because I had such a great rapport with Justin and I was like ‘Well, this has nowhere to go but down,’” recalls Razatos, whose second unit was just about to start shooting the film’s opening chase sequence in Italy.
But the crew had to balance their emotional unease with practical concerns. Dozens of key people had already spent months in preproduction getting the film’s complex machinery in motion, and there were hundreds more who had upended their lives for the promise of several months’ worth of work, across several different countries. It was the nerve-wracking uncertainty of “Furious 7” post Paul Walker all over again — although this time, few thought that Universal was going to shut the film down completely. The studio desperately needed “Fast X” to roll. Yet surely whoever stepped in would need a decent amount of time to readjust and recalibrate, right? “We heard so many different names of directors who were going to come in, and some of them you’re going ‘Oh, God, that’s a really famous director, and if he comes in, he’s going to change everything,’” recalls stunt coordinator Jack Gill. “‘Is our entire crew going to be out of work?’”
Some key department heads thought about walking away out of loyalty to Lin. Yet after the news broke, the director reached out to many of his collaborators and encouraged them to stay. “I asked Justin, ‘Should I go?’ He was the one who hired me. But I was also responsible for all my team, who had blocked out six months of time to be free,” says supervising stunt coordinator and splinter-unit director Olivier Schneider, who joined “Fast X” after first working with Lin on “Fast 6.” “Justin said definitely stay: ‘It’s my decision. I want what’s best for the franchise.’”
So everyone stayed put — except for Vegh, the director’s trusted head of previz. “It was kind of heartbreaking because a lot of effort went into it,” says Vegh, who likened the situation to an experience that’s common in previz work: you spend forever designing a sequence that is ultimately cut from the final film. “It’s hard, but you have to say, ‘Fuck that sequence.’ Because what you work on next, you’re going to crush that thing instead. It was the same thing with “Fast 10.” Yeah, it was heartbreaking. But also, this is a new chapter. I’m not going to say, ‘Fuck that’ to the “Fast” franchise, because that’s not how I feel. It’s more like ‘All right, let’s see what we can do better. Let’s see what’s new on the horizon.’”
Excerpted from “WELCOME TO THE FAMILY: The Explosive Story Behind Fast & Furious, the Blockbusters that Supercharged the World.” Copyright 2025 by Barry Hertz. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.