Vin Diesel says 'Fast Forever' starts shooting in December — after four years and four sets of writers

Vin Diesel wants cameras rolling on the final Fast & Furious film in December. He told Variety at the 25th anniversary screening of The Fast and the Furious on Monday night that Fast Forever — the 11th and last mainline entry in the series — is set to begin filming then, if he can meet the studio's request. Variety

The road to that start date was long. Diesel said the project went through four sets of writers and four years of development before he felt a script was worthy of closing out the franchise. He read the current draft a couple of weeks before the anniversary screening and told the audience it moved him to tears. His sister's response, according to Diesel: "No more crying, bro."

Fast Forever is booked into theatres for 17 March 2028. That gives the production roughly a year and a half from the targeted December shoot to release — a standard window for a franchise of this scale, where post-production on heavy action sequences can run months.

The franchise it closes out is a juggernaut for Universal. Fast & Furious is the studio's longest-running franchise and its most profitable, with a combined worldwide gross of $7.3 billion across the mainline films and spin-offs.

Not everyone is up to speed on the script yet. Director Louis Leterrier told Polygon he had yet to read it, according to Variety. Leterrier directed Fast X (2023) and is expected to return for the finale, though the film's final creative team has not been formally confirmed beyond Diesel's remarks.

For fans, the detail that lands hardest may be the simplest one: after four years, four writing teams, and what Diesel describes as an emotional read-through, the series that began in 2001 finally has a finish line on the calendar.