Vin Diesel stated that the eleventh and last installment of the Fast & Furious franchise will be released in theaters in April 2027 during a surprise visit at FuelFest 2025 in California on Saturday, June 28.
Additionally, he revealed to fans that he would work with Universal Studios on the project as long as the late Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner, who was last seen on screen in 2015’s Furious 7, came back to rejoin Dom.
“The studio said to me, ‘Vin, can we please have the finale of Fast & Furious April 2027?’ I said under three conditions. The first is to bring the franchise back to L.A. The second thing was to return to the car culture; to the street racing,” the actor shared, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Oh, this is good, you wanna know what the third thing was? … The third thing was reuniting Dom and Brian O’Conner. According to videos circulating on social media, Diesel, who plays Dominic “Dom” Toretto in the series, vowed that’s what viewers would get in the conclusion.
Though developments in AI and computer animation visual effects haven’t stopped studios from casting other departed stars in posthumous roles, including Peter Cushing in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, it’s unclear how Brian will feature in the next movie.
On November 30, 2013, Walker tragically lost his life in a car accident at the age of 40.
He hadn’t finished filming Furious 7 when he passed away, so it was rewritten and used CGI, VFX, and the actor’s brothers, Cody, who co-founded FuelFest, and Caleb, as stand-ins to enable his character’s appearance.
At the conclusion of Furious 7, Walker and his character were given a heartfelt farewell in 2015.
In the heartwarming sequence, Charlie Puth and Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again,” which was specially commissioned as an homage for the occasion, plays as Brian pulls up to Dom at a crossroads.
“You thought you could leave without saying goodbye?” Brian asks Dom. The two guys race and smile for a while before driving off in opposite directions, intercut with a montage of their moments together throughout the years. “You’ll always be with me, and you’ll always be my brother,” Dom resolves in a voice-over.
The release date of Furious 7 was April 3, 2015. With a worldwide box office total of over $1.5 billion, the movie became the franchise’s highest-grossing installment.