
Watch: Universal releases video of 'Fast & Furious' roller coaster
1 of 4 | Fans can ride in Dominic Toretto's Dodge Charger in "Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift" at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2026. Photo courtesy of Universal Studios
June 12 (UPI) -- Universal Studios Hollywood released a video previewing the upcoming Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift roller coaster. The coaster opens at the Los Angeles theme park in 2026.
The video intercuts race scenes from the movie franchise with animatics of what the finished roller coaster will look like. A train of four passenger cars, modeled after vehicles from the movies, will run along the track and also spin individually 360 degrees.
UPI saw the 4100 foot track under construction in May when it visited Universal Studios Hollywood for Fan Fest nights. The track includes loops and corkscrew turns.
Universal announced the ride's speed at 72 miles per hour, making it the fastest at the park. Other Universal roller coasters are based on the Harry Potter franchise and 1999's The Mummy.
By comparison, Cedar Point's Top Thrill Dragster can reach 120 mph and Six Flag Magic Mountain's Superman: Escape from Krypton could hit 100. Magic Mountain's Ninja and New Revolution each go 55 mph while Disneyland's classics Big Thunder Mountain is 36 and Space Mountain 27 mph.
The park first announced the coaster in 2024. It is the third attraction based on the franchise, following a vehicular stunt exhibit Extreme Close-Up and Supercharged, a stop on the tram tour simulating a street race with cast members from the movie on video screens.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Jason Voorhees Slays At Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights
Halloween Horror Nights resurrects the infamous Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th in an all-new ... More haunted house, 'Jason Universe.' Titan of terror Jason Voorhees rises again at this year's Halloween Horror Nights, and he is going to slay. Jason Universe sees the iconic killer from the infamous Friday the 13th films get his own haunted house at the seasonal event at both Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood for the first time. The all-original immersive nightmare will take brave guests back to the summer camp where the gruesome legend was born. Jason Universe is being described as "a vengeance tour through the summer camp to see where it all began, from the creaking floorboards of Jason's ramshackle cabin to the decaying main lodge and the eerie forest that offers no refuge for his victims." Fans are being promised recreations of classic kills from the multimillion-dollar franchise that launched 45 years ago with the theatrical release of the first film. Expect Jason, decked out in his legendary hockey mask, to "taunt and stalk" his victims who learn too late that everything they heard about him and his reign of terror is true. Described as an "homage to the machete-wielding slasher" who is considered one of the most notorious villains in cinematic history, Jason Universe sounds like a classic execution of an enduring and ever-popular 12-film horror franchise. Jason Universe isn't the first time Jason has appeared at Halloween Horror Nights, a mecca for fans of the genre. Most recently, at Universal Studios Hollywood, he was joined by Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, and Chucky on the Titans of Terror Tram on the Studio Tour Backlot in 2017. It has been nine years since he last featured in a haunted house there. The last one was 2016's Freddy Vs. Jason. In Orlando, his last appearance was in 2015 when he appeared in both a Freddy Vs. Jason attraction and the All Nite Die-In: Double Feature scarezone. Created by Victor Miller, the first Friday the 13th movie, directed by Sean S. Cunningham, arrived in theaters in May 1980. The most recent film was 2009's identically titled reboot, Friday the 13th, directed by Marcus Nispel and produced by Michael Bay. The most successful film in the franchise was the 2003 A Nightmare on Elm Street crossover, Freddy vs. Jason, which grossed $82.62 million worldwide. Although it has been a while since a new Friday the 13th movie has dropped, Crystal Lake, described as "an origin story for Jason and a prequel to the Friday the 13th franchise," is on the way. It will stream exclusively on Peacock debuting in October 2025. Confirmed cast members include franchise mainstay Adrienne King, Dead to Me's Linda Cardellini and Abigail's William Catlett. It's not known how or if the Halloween Horror Nights haunted house will integrate the new show. Jason Universe isn't the first of this year's attractions to be announced. Fallout, inspired by Prime Video's acclaimed smash hit show, was recently confirmed. Similarly to the horror homage, it will also appear at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Orlando Resort. Fallout will place fans in iconic scenes and face-to-face with their characters on a journey from Vault 33 to the Wasteland. Both parks have also recently teased that Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's, based on another widely popular videogame IP that inspired a hit movie and an upcoming sequel, will be featured in some form at Halloween Horror Nights. The blood red carpet gets rolled out for horror fans at Universal Studios Hollywood on Thursday, September 4, 2025. Universal Orlando Resort kicks off the festivities a little earlier on Friday, August 29, 2025. Tickets are now on sale. More news on additional Halloween Horror Nights haunted houses, scarezones, and live shows is expected in the coming weeks.


UPI
2 hours ago
- UPI
Sly Stone's isolation shaped a generation of sound
Sly Stone turned isolation into inspiration, forging a path for a generation of music-makers The charismatic front man of Sly and the Family Stone died on June 9, 2025, at the age of 82. File Photo/David Silpa/UPI | License Photo June 13 (UPI) -- In the fall of 1971, Sly and the Family Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On" landed like a quiet revolution. After two years of silence following the band's mainstream success, fans expected more feel-good funk from the ensemble. What they got instead was something murkier and more fractured, yet deeply intimate and experimental. This was not just an album; it was the sound of a restless mind rebuilding music from the inside out. At the center of it all was front man Sly Stone. Long before the home studio became an industry norm, Stone, who died on June 9, 2025, turned the studio into both a sanctuary and an instrument. And long before sampling defined the sound of hip-hop, he was using tape and machine rhythms to deconstruct existing songs to cobble together new ones. As someone who spends much of their time working on remote recording and audio production -- from building full arrangements solo to collaborating digitally across continents - I'm deeply indebted to Sly Stone's approach to making music. He was among the first major artists to fully embrace the recording environment as a space to compose rather than perform. Every reverb bounce, every drum machine tick, every overdubbed breath became part of the writing process. From studio rat to bedroom producer Sly and the Family Stone's early albums -- including "Dance to the Music" and "Stand!" - were recorded at top-tier facilities like CBS Studios in Los Angeles under the technical guidance of engineers such as Don Puluse and with oversight from producer David Rubinson. These sessions yielded bright, radio-friendly tracks that emphasized tight horn sections, group vocals and a polished sound. Producers also prized the energy of live performance, so the full band would record together in real time. But by the early 1970s, Stone was burnt out. The dual pressures of fame and industry demands were becoming too much. Struggling with cocaine and PCP addiction, he'd grown increasingly distrustful of bandmates, label executives and even his friends. So he decided to retreat to his hillside mansion in Bel Air, California, transforming his home into a musical bunker. Inside, he could work on his own terms: isolated and erratic, but free. Without a full band present, Stone became a one-man ensemble. He leaned heavily into overdubbing -- recording one instrument at a time and building his songs from fragments. Using multiple tape machines, he'd layer each part onto previous takes. The resulting album, "There's a Riot Goin' On," was like nothing he'd previously recorded. It sounds murky, jagged and disjointed. But it's also deeply intentional, as if every imperfection was part of the design. In "The Poetics of Rock," musicologist Albin Zak describes this "composerly" approach to production, where recording itself becomes a form of writing, not just documentation. Stone's process for "There's a Riot Goin' On" reflects this mindset: Each overdub, rhythm loop and sonic imperfection functions more like a brushstroke than a performance. Automating the groove A key part of Stone's tool kit was the Maestro Rhythm King, a preset drum machine he used extensively. It wasn't the first rhythm box on the market. But Stone's use of it was arguably the first time such a machine shaped the entire aesthetic of a mainstream album. The drum parts on his track "Family Affair," for example, don't swing - they tick. What might have been viewed as soulless became its own kind of soul. This early embrace of mechanical rhythm prefigured what would later become a foundation of hip-hop and electronic music. In his book "Dawn of the DAW," music technology scholar Adam Patrick Bell calls this shift "a redefinition of groove," noting how drum machines like the Rhythm King encouraged musicians to rethink their songwriting process, building tracks in shorter, repeatable sections while emphasizing steady, looped rhythms rather than free-flowing performances. Though samplers wouldn't emerge until years later, Stone's work already contained that repetition, layering and loop-based construction that would become characteristic of the practice. He recorded his own parts the way future DJs would splice records - isolated, reshuffled, rhythmically obsessed. His overdubbed bass lines, keyboard vamps and vocal murmurs often sounded like puzzle pieces from other songs. Music scholar Will Fulton, in his study of Black studio innovation, notes how producers like Stone helped pioneer a fragment-based approach to music-making that would become central to hip-hop's DNA. Stone's process anticipated the mentality that a song isn't necessarily something written top to bottom, but something assembled, brick by brick, from what's available. Perhaps not surprisingly, Stone's tracks have been sampled relentlessly. In "Bring That Beat Back," music critic Nate Patrin identifies Stone as one of the most sample-friendly artists of the 1970s - not because of his commercial hits, but because of how much sonic space he left in his tracks: the open-ended grooves, unusual textures and slippery emotional tone. You can hear his sounds in famous tracks such as 2Pac's "If My Homie Calls," which samples "Sing a Simple Song"; A Tribe Called Quest's "The Jam," which draws from "Family Affair"; and De La Soul's "Plug Tunin'," which flips "You Can Make It If You Try." The studio as instrument While Sly's approach was groundbreaking, he wasn't entirely alone. Around the same time, artists such as Brian Wilson and The Rolling Stones were experimenting with home and nontraditional recording environments - Wilson famously retreating to his home studio during "Pet Sounds," and the Stones tracking "Exile on Main St." in a French villa. Yet in the world of Black music, production remained largely centralized in institutionally controlled studio systems such as Motown in Detroit and Stax in Memphis, where sound was tightly managed by in-house producers and engineers. In that context, Stone's decision to isolate, self-produce and dismantle the standard workflow was more than a technical choice: It was a radical act of autonomy. The rise of home recording didn't just change who could make music. It changed what music felt like. It made music more internal, iterative and intimate. Sly Stone helped invent that feeling. It's easy to hear "There's a Riot Goin' On" as murky or uneven. The mix is dense with tape hiss, drum machines drift in and out of sync, and vocals often feel buried or half-whispered. But it's also, in a way, prophetic. It anticipated the aesthetics of bedroom pop, the cut-and-paste style of modern music software, the shuffle of playlists and the recycling of sounds that defines sample culture. It showed that a groove didn't need to be spontaneous to be soulful, and that solitude could be a powerful creative tool, not a limitation. In my own practice, I often record alone, passing files back and forth, building from templates and mapping rhythm to grid - as do millions of musical artists who compose tracks from their bedrooms, closets and garages. Half a century ago, a funk pioneer led the way. I think it's safe to say that Sly Stone quietly changed the process of making music forever - and in the funkiest way possible. Jose Valentino Ruiz is an associate professor of music business and entrepreneurship at the University of Florida. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.


UPI
2 hours ago
- UPI
Watch: Julianne Moore says 'Sirens' Season 2 is 'not up to me'
1 of 5 | Julianne Moore arrives on the red carpet for the "Echo Valley" New York premiere on June 4. She discussed "Sirens" on "Tonight" Thursday. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo June 13 (UPI) -- Julianne Moore discussed the possibility of a sophomore season for her Netflix series Sirens on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon Thursday. The dark comedy, which also stars Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock, amassed some 16.7 million views within four days of its arrival on the streamer. "Fans love it so much, they want it to come back, for Season 2," Fallon said. "It's crazy. Yeah," Moore responded. When asked about whether or not Season 2 could be on the horizon, Moore said, "It's not up to me. It's up to our writer Molly Smith Metzler... But the last time you saw me, I was on a ferry leaving town, and I don't know how she'd get back." The show follows Simone (Alcock) and her "trauma-bonded" relationship with her wealthy employer Kiki (Moore). Series creator Metzler says the women "really need something from each other. And what they need from each other shifts through the show." The series also stars Kevin Bacon and Glenn Howerton. Moore also stars in the upcoming Apple TV+ film Echo Valley opposite Sydney Sweeney. Sydney Sweeney, Julianne Moore attend 'Echo Valley' premiere Stars Sydney Sweeney (L) and Julianne Moore arrive on the red carpet for the premiere of "Echo Valley" in New York City on June 4, 2025. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo