Fast & Furious & Way Less Expensive. Long-Running Star Film Franchise Gets Reality Check – Universal Wants To Cut Budget Down To $200M To Be Profitable. “Fast X: Part 2” Doesn’t Have Approved Script Or Release Date & Most Of Cast Don’t Have Deals To Appear As Well But Latest Draft Costs About $250M.

Full text:

“The auto-racing festival FuelFest this summer featured everything fans of the Fast & Furious movies love: tricked-out cars, drag racing, live music and DJs. Then to top it all off, Vin Diesel took the stage.

Wearing a sleeveless shirt that read “Toretto’s Garage” — named after the character in the franchise that made him a star — Diesel said he had just met with executives at Universal Pictures who urged him to deliver the next Fast & Furious movie by April 2027.

“I said under three conditions,” Diesel declared: To return the franchise to Los Angeles, delve back into street-racing culture, and reunite Toretto with his former partner, who was played by the late Paul Walker. “That is what you’re gonna get!” he yelled as he walked off the stage.

Behind the scenes, however, the conversation around the future of the Fast & Furious franchise is very different, according to people familiar with the matter. The next sequel doesn’t have an approved script or a release date. Most of the cast don’t have deals to appear in it.

Executives at Universal aren’t even certain they’ll make the movie unless they and the filmmakers can find a way to produce it far more economically than the last installment, which barely earned a profit.

Over the past quarter century, 11 Fast & Furious movies have grossed a total of $7.3 billion, making it Universal’s most successful big-screen brand. In a cinema landscape full of superheroes and robots, Fast & Furious found a lane for fans of over-the-top auto stunts and a huge, racially diverse cast who emphasize their bonds as a family.

But throughout Hollywood, mega-franchises that once fueled the industry are sputtering. Marvel, DC and Transformers movies cost as much as ever to make, but consistently earn less at the box office. “$700 million is the new $1 billion” has become a common refrain in Hollywood about the new box-office reality.

Fast & Furious is grappling with the same problem. Its last entry, 2023’s “Fast X,” was the franchise’s lowest-grossing release in more than a decade at $705 million—and its most expensive, with a budget of $340 million.

Universal executives have told filmmakers they won’t make another sequel unless it costs around $200 million. That way it would earn a healthy profit even if it grosses less than “Fast X.” Studios typically look for a film to gross three times its budget to earn a targeted return on investment.

Everyone involved in the movie is scrambling to find a way to deliver the action and scope that audiences expect on a budget that matches Hollywood’s new economic reality. Their plan is for the movie to be the capstone for the current cast.

“The only thing we’re focused on is making this a satisfying finale both creatively and financially,” said producer Neal Moritz.

After that, Fast & Furious might go in new—and less expensive—creative directions on television and the big screen, people familiar with the franchise said.”

First movie to cost half a billion in budget and gonna need to make 2 billion to be profitable