According to The Hollywood Reporter, Furious 7 director James Wan passed on eighth installment, choosing to return to his Conjuring horror series.
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Furious 7 had a notoriously troubled production, with star Paul Walker dying in a auto crash halfway through shooting.
The movie remains stalled as long as there is no film director on sight with rumors surfacing as to why Universal Pictures was still unable to locate a filmmaker to fill the job.
As its announced April 2017 release date closes in and screenwriter Chris Morgan works on the script, Universal still has not found a director for the next outing. To date that figure reps 15% of Furious 7’s $351M domestic box office, the latter of which was spurred by an enormous social media campaign supported by the film’s cast; two of them – Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson – being skyscrapers in the SMU.
But Mr. Wan is said to have felt that rather than life altering, the deal could have been life ending.
A Universal spokesperson issued a statement on the matter insisting the only reason why James isn’t returning for Furious 8 is because he is already booked to direct The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist. The eighth chapter to the franchise was green-lit earlier this year in April after Furious 7 went on to gross $1.5 billion worldwide. That was fine by Universal, as they thought they might be able to lure Justin Lin back to the series after stepping away for a film, but once Lin signed on for STAR TREK 3, that left Universal between a rock and a hard place.
I’m not entirely sure that any problems with Diesel on the set of Furious 7 would have resulted in the canning of a Furious 8, especially after the kind of money the most recent sequel pulled in.
Needless to say, it’s a suggestion rejected by both Diesel and Wan’s representatives, while producer Neal Moritz also said, “obviously if there was any issue, we wouldn’t be making the eighth [film] with [Diesel] right now”. They’ve reached out to both experienced action directors, like Jaume Collet-Serra (Non-Stop) who also turned down the offer, and inexperienced action directors with no luck yet.
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But here we are with FAST FIVE, FAST & FURIOUS 6 and FURIOUS 7 setting the stage for the series to keep on going into the future, stronger than ever.
