Long before Dwayne Johnson’s musclebound hero brought the cavalry in Furious 7 (spoilers: it involved The Rock and a minigun), Luke Hobbs, the actor’s larger-than-life enforcer, had already established himself as a firm fan-favorite among the Fast and Furious family.
It’s for this reason that, once Universal announced plans to continue the street-racing series beyond 2021 with character-driven spinoffs, Johnson’s Luke Hobbs was one of the first names to be tossed into the hat – particularly now that the actor’s star power has grown exponentially since headlining San Andreas and, soon, Paramount’s Baywatch reboot.
[zerg]With production on Fast 8 well underway ahead of a release in April of next year, producer Hiram Garcia spoke to ComicBook.com about the innate likeability of Luke Hobbs.
“Hobbs was one of the first characters we merged together on and when Fast approached [Dwayne Johnson], telling him about the character they wanted to create, [Dwayne Johnson] and I were able to sit down and craft this guy that we would just laugh out loud at the lines we would come up with. When you can say you’re gonna put a hurt on someone so bad you’ll make their mama wish they kept their legs closed, stuff like that where we can’t even finish the line before laughing – that’s the fun we love.”
Much of that comes down to Dwayne Johnson’s charisma both on and off camera, which leads Garcia to believe that it’s all but certain Universal will green light a Fast and Furious spinoff based on Johnson’s hardboiled hero before long.
“I think there’s always been conversations for that. The scheduling of it all is a challenge but there are always talks about a potential spinoff movie and what we can do with it. DJ and I were just talking about that the other day – our visions for it. There’s a real goal for that and we can have enough fun with that where we’ve earned that now with the audience. He’s a beloved enough character that they’d love to see what a ride with him would be like in his world. We have tons of history that we’ve crafted for this guy that we continue to sprinkle in throughout the movies. You’ll see a little bit more in this movie but ultimately we want to take that ride and spin him off and have some fun with it.”
As things stand, Dwayne Johnson will return to Universal’s tentpole when Fast 8 opens on April 14, 2017. It’ll be followed by Fast & Furious 9 and Fast & Furious 10 across April 19, 2019 and April 2, 2021, respectively, during which time Universal will likely piece together those character-driven spinoffs.