'Fast Five' Director Expects Superstar Cast Back For Sequel

'Now we know the audience wants the journey to continue,' Justin Lin says of giving franchise a sixth installment.
By Eric Ditzian

Paul Walker and Vin Diesel in "Fast Five"
Photo: Universal Pictures

How did "Fast Five" director Justin Lin celebrate his film's epic opening weekend? With a nine-inch meatball sub that might have left him with a bit of indigestion were it not for the full-body euphoria that descended upon him when the action flicked ended up grossing $86.2 million domestically.

"That's been a tradition," Lin told MTV News by phone from Taiwan, where the film just had another overseas premiere. "A producer gives me the Friday numbers. Then I shut everything down and get a big meatball sandwich and conk out."

"Fast Five" stars Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson didn't take in the good news in quite such a gluttonous way. "It's been so much fun traveling around with them," Lin said. "I had no idea the Rock was huge in Amsterdam! So I've gotten to joke around a lot with him on the road. And, you know, Vin and I have been talking since the fourth [movie] about trying to plant seeds for a trilogy. You do that hoping you'll earn it. The fourth one did so well and earned the fifth one. With me and Vin, now that the fifth has done well, it brings us back to that point of discussion of planting the seeds and growing it to the length we want."

That means, of course, a sixth installment of the "Fast and Furious" series. And if Lin gets his wishes, the entire all-star cast from "Fast Five" — including, Diesel, Johnson, Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson — will return for the new flick.

"I feel like that's appropriate," Lin said of the full cast coming back. "The sixth one, I have a very good idea of the arena we're going to be playing in. We talked about that stuff two or three years ago. And now I'll be on a plane with Paul or Tyrese, and it's just fun. When we get together, even outside of filming and talk about the characters, you don't even know if you're going to get to do it. But now we know the audience wants the journey to continue; I can sense the excitement with everyone that what we talked about is going to get to come to life."

What Lin and his team are going to bring to life, the director promised, will not be a retread of franchise films past. "You sometimes get the sense that when people make sequels, they get conservative," he said. "If something worked, they do it over and over and over again. You can say whatever you want about this franchise, but we've been able to try new things and grow and evolve. We're acknowledging growth not only for the characters, but visually and stylistically. There's this theme of family, and we'll explore it in different ways."

So what will this sixth film be called? Lin wasn't ready to reveal that just yet.

"I'm just enjoying 'Fast Five'!" he laughed. "The fun of naming it — and we always have a lot of fun with that — will come soon enough."

Check out everything we've got on "Fast Five."

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1663293/fast-five-sequel-director-justin-lin.jhtml

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