Ever since the idea of a ‘Hobbs’ spin-off film from the ‘Fast and Furious’ film franchise emerged quite a while back, a major vocal opponent to the idea has been Tyrese. Tyrese has starred in four of the eight films in the franchise and is considered by many to be one of the franchise OG’s. While the ‘Fast and Furious‘ franchise is currently regarded as one of the most successful and desirable franchises to be a part of in Hollywood, this was not always the case. The first three films were all successful but each provided shrinking returns for the studio upon their respective releases. It wasn’t until the fourth film, where the original cast was reunited (without Tyrese) that the franchise began to take on a glimmer of new life. Though, everything changed with the arrival of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in ‘Fast Five’. The glimmer of hope that was shown in the fourth film had been supercharged and elevated to the next level in the fifth film. The conscious decision to focus more on the action involving cars opposed to solely action based around racing completely revitalized the franchise. One major player in the revitalization was Dwayne Johnsons ‘Hobbs’, the cat and mouse game between Hobbs and the crew facilitated the story to shift its focus towards the previously mentioned narrative structure. Dwayne’s arrival coupled with the story flexibility that a character like Hobbs provides has helped the franchise grow into one of the Top 5 biggest franchises on the planet, which you would think would lead to a great mood all around the ‘Fast Family’ as they lovingly refer to it as. Wrong. There have long been rumors about Dwayne and Vin Diesel getting into it behind the scenes but it’s been kept there, which is how business should be done. Now, with the impending production on the franchises first spin-off feature (which in a normal world would be a good thing because you know, people give a shit about the franchise) ‘Hobbs’ it seems as if behind the scenes tempers have finally reached a boiling point. For the past few weeks, Tyrese has been becoming increasingly vocal about his disdain for the idea of a spin-off, but as of yesterday, this was taken to a whole new level when Tyrese posted this scathing message for Dwayne Johnson on Instagram.
While I understand his gripes with Dwayne not being a part of the OG ‘Fast Family’ and that the films represent more than one name above the bill, but the franchise has to grow in new and interesting ways. The MCU isn’t just all ‘Avengers’ movies and it all works out just fine. Not to mention, this franchise basically already had a spinoff called ‘Tokyo Drift’ that featured next to no one from the original two movies. Backroom drama being played out in public is not a good look for anyone involved and I hope that Tyrese can get some kind of closure on this issue seeing as ‘Fast 9’ starts filming immediately after the ‘Hobbs’ spinoff wraps production.
We’ll keep you posted on more ‘Fast 9’ and ‘Hobbs’ news as it develops.
