GET EW ON YOUR TABLET: Subscribe today and get instant access! That approach is what made the difference, and took us from where we were with Tokyo Drift to tripling those numbers for Fast & Furious 4. In this new age of filmmaking, if the audience sees a movie, they want to carry that equity with them to the next movie. But that was the game, and that was the goal. If you didn’t have that, you’d be crazy to think that you could tell an episodic story. The only people in Hollywood that could do it were people that had the backing of previously-written novels.

It was evident to me that the audience was kind of getting used to episodic storytelling. When I came back, they wanted me to be a producer. Take the brand, throw any story together, and sell the brand. After the first movie, they were still treating it the way Hollywood treated franchises in the ’80s and ’90s. If you notice the first three movies, they were fragmented, they were unconnected - which was part of the reason why I wasn’t keen on continuing the franchise in the early stages. There weren’t the various comic issues that the whole public could identify with. VIN DIESEL: The first thing to note is that that was once a curse: The fact that we didn’t have novels, we didn’t have stories that people would accept as a saga. What, to you, is the secret to the longevity of the franchise? It’s not a superhero movie or a fantasy saga. For our Fast & Furious 6 cover story, we talked to Diesel about Fast, Riddick, Facebook, and Hannibal the Conqueror.ĮNTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The Fast films are very different from the other major blockbuster franchises this summer. In between then and now, though, Diesel became a social-media phenomenon and an action-hero comeback kid… and he still has his sights set on his long-in-the-works passion project about a certain Carthaginian General. There will never be another Riddick,’” says Diesel now. “Nine years ago, the studio said: ‘You will never make this movie again.

Universal is distributing another Diesel movie this summer, featuring the actor’s other iconic character: Riddick arrives in theaters in September, 13 years after Pitch Black unexpectedly started the sci-fi franchise and nine years after the so-so box office for The Chronicles of Riddick appeared to end it. ( Fast & Furious 7 is already slated for a 2014 release.) It’s opening on Memorial Day, and Universal is bullish on its box office prospects. His most famous character - soulful auto-outlaw Dominic Toretto - is returning to screens in Fast & Furious 6, which marks the long-running franchise’s return to the summer blockbuster season. Vin Diesel is about to have a good summer.

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