Fast & Furious (film franchise)

Fast & Furious (film franchise), Hollywood film franchise that follows a group of street racers who use their driving skills to win races and sell stolen goods but, over the course of the series, move on to catching criminals and helping save the world. The series includes 10 main films, as well as 1 spin-off film and 2 shorts, and has grossed more than $7 billion at the global box office. An 11th film is in the works. The franchise has also been adapted into a series of video games and an attraction at the Universal Studios theme park in Florida.

Origin and inspiration

The series was originally inspired by a 1998 Vibe magazine feature by journalist Kenneth Li titled “Racer X,” an evocative profile of street racers in New York City. “At dusk, they take over the road,” wrote Li. “Roaring and buzzing like locusts, the swarm of asphalt-scraping Japanese cars…As the sun dances on the nearby river, the sound of honking horns and screaming drivers is drowned out by the sonic blast of the two engines revving for takeoff.” Universal Studios optioned the film rights and began production two years later, deviating heavily from the article’s plot. Li described the eventual film to Yahoo! News as “American Graffiti meets Point Break meets West Side Story.” Directed by Rob Cohen and starring then-indie actor Vin Diesel alongside Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster, The Fast and the Furious, the first film in the franchise, opened at number one at the box office and grossed an eventual $207 million worldwide.

The first film’s title was not original—it was also the name of a 1954 film cowritten by Roger Corman. That film featured a prison escapee stealing a car (and kidnapping its occupant) before a road race to Mexico. After considering titles such as Race Wars and Redline, Universal acquired the rights to the name The Fast and the Furious.

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(The following discussions may contain spoilers.)

Plot evolution and series timeline

The first film in the Fast & Furious series is grounded in the culture of street racing as described in “Racer X.” Like the drivers in the article, The Fast and the Furious racers enhance their cars with “NOS” (nitrous oxide, often used in racing to give cars boosts of speed) and attempt to avoid the police. Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Diesel) and his friends are involved in the relatively low-level crime of stealing DVD players. They are pursued by Brian O’Conner (Walker), a Los Angeles Police Department officer who is eventually won over to their side by their fast cars and makeshift family.

As the series continues, the stakes escalate. In the fourth film, 2009’s Fast & Furious, Brian, now with the FBI, works with Toretto against a heroin smuggler. In Fast & Furious 6 (2013), Toretto’s crew is charged with taking down the leader of a mercenary group. By F9: The Fast Saga (2021), Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) take their driving skills to space in a car turned rocket. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019) is not part of the main series but a spin-off starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham.

The films’ release order does not always correlate with the in-universe timeline. Most notably Fast & Furious (2009), Fast Five (2011), and Fast & Furious 6 (2013) are prequels to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which was released in 2006. This allowed the fan-favorite character Han Lue, played by Sung Kang, to appear in each film, even though Han allegedly died in a car crash in Tokyo Drift. F9: The Fast Saga revisits Han’s fate, revealing that he had faked his death with the help of government agent Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell). Han is not the only character in the franchise to come back from presumed death. Dom’s love interest Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) “dies” in Fast & Furious but reappears as an amnesiac working for villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) in Fast & Furious 6. Gisele (Gal Gadot), a cartel member who later joins Dom’s team, ostensibly sacrifices her life to save Han in Fast & Furious 6; the character makes a miraculous return in Fast X.

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Key characters

The franchise’s cast, particularly Diesel, developed into major creative players as the films became more popular. Diesel’s unpaid cameo at the end of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which otherwise featured no returning characters from the first or second films in the franchise, helped bring that movie into the universe of the main series. Following Tokyo Drift, and despite his absence from the bulk of that film as well as 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), Diesel stepped into the role of (self-described) “saga visionary.” Subsequent films emphasized the bond between Diesel’s and Walker’s characters, prior to Walker’s death in 2013. In 2025 Diesel implied that a digitally created version of Walker may appear again as Brian in the upcoming Fast X: Part 2, the franchise’s apparent finale. In and out of character, Diesel has consistently emphasized “family” as a main theme of the series.

Key characters in the series include:

• Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel): Leader of a group of street racers in Los Angeles
• Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez): A street racer and Dom’s love interest
• Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker): Former cop turned crew member
• Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster): Dom’s sister, whose romance with Brian helps persuade him to join the group
• Tej Parker (Ludacris): A mechanic and hacker who is part of a comedic duo with Roman
• Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson): A childhood friend of Brian’s who turned to stealing cars; the other half of Tej’s comedic partnership
• Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell): A government agent who brings Dom’s crew into the world of international espionage
• Han Lue (Sung Kang): A street racer who is revealed to work for Mr. Nobody as a secret agent
• Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson): A Diplomatic Security Service agent who attempts to arrest Dom’s crew before eventually helping the team take down a criminal organization
• Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham): A criminal who seeks revenge on Dom’s crew for killing his villainous brother but ultimately joins the group and collaborates with Hobbs

List of movies in the franchise