Jamie Foxx is no stranger to action-oriented roles, from his time playing Spider-Man villain Electro to more straightforward action flicks like Collateral, Miami Vice and Baby Driver. As it turns out, there was also a period where he also could have put the pedal to the metal in the Fast & Furious franchise. Foxx was being courted for what was going to be a major role, though I’m honestly glad nothing ever came of this.
Before I explain why I feel this way, here’s what you need to know. In the new book Welcome to the Family, where author Barry Hertz explores the history of the Fast & Furious movies, it’s mentioned that an alternate F9 post-credits scene was written “with the hope of featuring Jamie Foxx as a new villain.” This scene never progressed past the ideating stage, and it was just one of several other post-credits scenes that were thought of for the 2021 Fast & Furious movie. As screenwriter Daniel Casey, who wrote the screenplay with director Justin Lin, said (via ScreenRant):
We wrote postcredit button scenes for quite a few different characters in F9, including actors that we hoped would play the villains in Fast 10—people who weren’t even in these movies, who you just hoped to see. I think we wrote eight different buttons for F9 until going with the one with Jason Statham.
Now, I want to make it clear that me being glad this Jamie Foxx post-credits scene never materialized has nothing to do with his acting ability. The man is an Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning actor, so it’d be foolish for anyone to think he wouldn’t have delivered the goods in several Fast & Furious movies. My issue is that introducing Foxx’s villain character at the end of F9 meant that we likely wouldn’t have gotten Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes.
Casey and Lin decided to instead have Han Lue show up on Deckard Shaw’s doorstep, revealing to the latter that he actually hadn’t killed the former like he thought he did, as seen retroactively in Tokyo Drift, and then directly in Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7. That by itself wouldn’t have affected Jamie Foxx’s hypothetical character from being introduced in Fast X. But had this character been the focus of the F9 scene, then there would have been an obligation to use as the main antagonist in Fast X instead of Dante, and I don’t think that would have been a good tradeoff.
Fast X is by no means my favorite Fast & Furious movie, but I did enjoy watching the sociopathic Dante embarking on a mission of revenge against Dominic Toretto and his crew. I’m looking forward to seeing this storyline resolved in Fast & Furious 11, which appears to finally be making progress forward. Jamie Foxx surely would have played a good villain, but I wouldn’t that to come at the expense of Momoa’s character hamming it up and painting the toenails of dead guys.
Since Fast & Furious 11 is set to be the last entry in the main film series, we won’t get to see Jamie Foxx play someone who makes life hell for Dom and his family. However, if the franchise races on with spinoffs, then I’d definitely welcome him antagonizing those protagonists from behind the wheel. Feel free to revisit F9 with your Amazon Prime Video subscription.