Everything We Know About Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

Federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) and former British Special Forces assassin-turned-mercenary Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham)—two men who are opposites in every way—are forced to form an unlikely partnership and team up against Brixton Lore (Idris Elba) a genetically-enhanced terrorist who threatens the fate of humanity.

Directed by: David Leitch
Written by: Chris Morgan
Starring: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jason Statham, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza González, Idris Elba, and Helen Mirren

Movie Facts

• Neither Hobbs nor Shaw will appear in Justin Lin's Fast & Furious 9, which is currently filming and set for a 2020 release. Dwayne Johnson, who has appeared in every Fast & Furious movie since 2012's Fast Five, said that neither he nor Jason Statham will appear in the franchises's next installment—though there’s still hope that they could appear in Fast 10, is scheduled to premiere in 2021.
• The Fast & Furious franchise didn't start out with that title: originally, 2001's The Fast and the Furious was known as Redline. The rights to The Fast and the Furious belonged to director Roger Corman, who released a film with that title in 1955. In order to use the title for their new franchise, Universal ended up giving Corman rights to rolls of Universal stock footage in exchange for the rights to his movie title.
• The Fast & Furious franchise began with "Racer X," a VIBE magazine article written by Kenneth Li about the New York racing scene. Director Robert Cohen was inspired by the article as well as a Los Angeles car race he had watched and pitched the idea Universal Studios. He was then able to convince Universal to make this film and they bought the rights to the film from Li.
• The MPAA took issue with one particularly gory scene in Hobbs and Shaw, which saw Johnson's character bite a villain's eyeball out, then spit it on the ground.
• Fast and the Furious is currently the 7th highest-grossing movie franchise in Hollywood history.
• It’s pretty rare when a spinoff turns into its own franchise ... or is it? "It's not an origin story, but we're starting a franchise," Hobbs and Shaw director David Leitch said in an interview. "So we want it to be a little bit more grounded, a little bit more character-centric.

Universal Pictures will release Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw in theaters on August 2, 2019.