Vin Diesel let slip at the premiere of Fast X that Universal was considering extending the final entry in the long-running franchise into a self-contained trilogy, which is so nonsensical that it makes complete sense when you consider The Fast Saga‘s evolution from mid budget street-racing thriller to $340 million behemoth with the fate of the world at stake yet again.
While it’s insanely ambitious – and potentially even misguided – to assume that audiences are going to be interested in watching what’s destined to be a preposterous story stretched out into six hours of cinema, the studio will be emboldened to plow ahead with the scheme should the 10th entry in the series decimate the box office. However, there’s a serious chance that it won’t.
Early projections have Fast X heading for the lowest domestic opening weekend the main drag has seen for well over a decade, but it’s the international numbers that are even more worrying. To put things into perspective, the last four movies (including spin-off Hobbs & Shaw) have been colossal hits in China that earned $390 million, $392 million, $201 million, and $216 million respectively.
Fast X, meanwhile, has only sold $2 million in advance tickets ahead of its Chinese release, which is lagging 60 percent behind Hobbs & Shaw, 75 percent behind F9, and 90 percent behind The Fate of the Furious. When you consider just how much of the entire box office haul comes directly from a solitary country, bombing in China could prove to be disastrous for Dominic Toretto and the family’s last stand, whether it ends up being split in two or dissected into three.