Vin Diesel needn't worry about job security over the next few years.
The sixth installment of the Fast and Furious franchise will be split into two movies, the 44-year-old star and producer announced Wednesday. Directed by Justin Lin, Diesel said the two scripts are being written simultaneously.
"With the success of this last one, and the inclusion of so many characters, and the broadening of scope, when we were sitting down to figure out what would fit into the real estate of number six, we didn't have enough space," Diesel explained to The Hollywood Reporter.
Since The Fast and the Furious debuted in 2001, the five films have generated $1.6 billion worldwide at the box office. Its most recent installment, Fast Five, starred Diesel, Paul Walker, 38, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, 39, Jordana Brewster, 31, and Tyrese Gibson, 32; it garnered $626 million worldwide.
"We have to pay off this story, we have to service all of these character relationships, and when we started mapping all that out it just went beyond 110 pages," Diesel explained. "The studio said, 'You can't fit all that story in one damn movie!'"
Walker insists there's more depth to the series than audiences might realize.
"It's not about the action and the cars, which initially appealed to me when I was 25 years old," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Because if that's all it was, it would have fallen off a long time ago."
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