Vin Diesel teases surprise Fast and Furious return for late Paul Walker

Perth Now

30-06-2025

Vin Diesel has teased the late Paul Walker will feature in Fast and Furious 11.
The 57-year-old actor - who has portrayed Dominic 'Dom' Toretto in the 'Fast and Furious' franchise since its debut in 2001 - admitted one of his "conditions" for returning for a final movie in the series was to bring back Brian O'Conner, the cop-turned-street racer who was played by his friend until his death in a car accident in 2013.
Speaking at Fuel Fest in California over the weekend, Vin said: 'The studio said to me, 'Vin, can we please have the finale of 'Fast and Furious' [in] April 2027?'
'I said, 'Under three conditions.' First, is to bring the franchise back to LA! The second thing was to return to the car culture, to the street racing! The third thing was reuniting Dom and Brian O'Conner.'
It is unclear how the character could return to the series and Vin didn't expand on whether archive footage or a digital creation would be used.
The last film in the franchise was Fast X, which was released in May 2023 and was initially advertised as the first of a two-part saga but it is now unclear whether Fast 11 will pick up the story after such a lengthy delay.
Alan Ritchson was a newcomer in Fast X as Agent Aimes and he recently admitted the next movie has been delayed because it takes so long to co-ordinate the schedules of stars in the franchise such as Dwayne Johnson and Jason Momoan.
Alan told Screen Rant: "We talk about it quite often. That is one of the biggest challenges that the franchise faces is that you've got a lot of guys like Dwayne and Vin and Momoa and myself and everybody's super busy. So trying to get the stars to align so we can make that happen is a feat of nature.
"So we'll see how it goes, but this is a passion project for Universal and it's one that I had a blast doing, so I'd love to get in there, and I'll bring it to life again."
Alan previously revealed that he only landed the role of Aimes when Keanu Reeves was forced to drop out of 'Fast X'.
The 42-year-old actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2023: "It was just a little stroke of luck and good timing.
"I was working on ('Ordinary Angels'), a movie with Hilary Swank up in Winnipeg in the freezing cold, and I got a call that things had shifted in the plans with Keanu Reeves, which is I think who was originally intended to play my part. Tough act to follow."
However, the 'Smallville' star explained that the cold weather almost ruined his chances of appearing in the picture.
He said: "Basically the deal was if there's no problems, we don't shut down for Covid or weather, this should work, and about two weeks later, we got news that we were going to get hit with the biggest blizzard in Winnipeg's history.
"All production shut down. It was disheartening. I thought it was over before it began, but luckily we worked it out and they were able to push the dates a little more."