Vin Diesel has posted a new on his official Facebook page in which he addresses his 100 million fans. At about the 22-minute mark in the video, Diesel tells his fans that he takes their Fast & Furious casting suggestion quite seriously and says they are the main reason Michelle Rodriguez’s character, Letty, was brought back and Jason Statham was added to the franchise.
However, the biggest revelation is when Diesels reveals that Luke Hobbs, the character introduced in Fast Five and played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, was originally written for another actor.
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“Back in the fifth film, I was asking ‘Who should I work with?’ The reason why we brought Dwayne Johnson into Fast Five was because of you,” Diesel explains. “There was a girl named Jen (maybe, Jan?) Kelly who said, ‘I would love to see you guys work together on-screen.’ And so, we gave a role that was initially written for Tommy Lee Jones but we gave it to Dwayne, and he shined in it.”
Jones is an Academy Award-winning actor who is best known for playing U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive, Two-Face in Batman Forever, William Strannix in Under Siege, Agent K in the Men in Black film series, and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men.
Fast Five (2011) – Vin Diesel and Paul Walker lead a reunion of all-stars from every chapter of the explosive franchise built on speed. Fugitive Dom Toretto (Diesel) partners with former cop Brian O’Conner (Walker) on the opposite side of the law in exotic Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There they are hunted by a high-powered U.S. strike force led by its toughest Fed (Dwayne Johnson) and an army of corrupt cops working for a ruthless drug kingpin. To gain their freedom and win this ultimate high-stakes race, they must pull off one last job – an insane heist worth $100 million.
Fast 8 will land in theaters April 14, 2017.
