A racer can’t stay parked for long. Today, Universal released the full trailer for Fast X, the tenth Fast and Furious movie (or the tenth movie in “The Fast Saga,” or whatever I’m supposed to call these). This trailer is the one that will play during the Super Bowl on Sunday; if you can figure out why a studio would pay millions of dollars to air a trailer during the Super Bowl and then release it two days early, you’ve got one up on me. Fast X pits Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto against Jason Momoa’s Dante, the son of the drug lord Toretto defeated in Fast Five (played by the great Joaquim de Almeida), who wants revenge and is willing to go through Toretto’s “family” to do it. Aside from Diesel, most of the usual suspects are returning, including Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood, and now John Cena. They pretty much outnumber the bad guys at this point, don’t they? Also back is Jason Statham, which means I have to watch this, and Charlize Theron as Cipher, the Blofeld of The Fast Saga. Brie Larson and Michael Rooker are joining this time as new characters. Louis Leterrier is directing Fast X, replacing Justin Lin, who is still producing and co-wrote the screenplay. The film will arrive in theaters on May 19, 2023, and you can see the new trailer below:
I’ve said it before, but I’m not a big fan of The Fast Saga, so the Fast X trailer didn’t do much for me besides making me aware that Jason Statham is in this, so for better or worse, it’s on my list. If you like these films, it looks like Fast X is going to give you what you want; lots of car-related action. Yesterday, Leterrier told Empire that he was bringing the series down to a more grounded level of mayhem with Fast X after the excesses of the last few entries, but the budget is $340 million, over $100 million more than the previous movie! These Fast and Furious pictures tend to do gangbuster business, so I guess if you’re going to spend over $200 million on a race car movie, this would be the one to do it on, but still, that’s a lot of money just on the budget to make back. To be fair, the three before it all had bigger budgets than F9 (not that any of them cracked $300 million), and they were obviously profitable if they’re on to the tenth one now. But I don’t know how much stock I would put in that “down to Earth” quote with a budget like that.