Around the time when
Fast Five was hitting the home video market, reports surfaced about the next franchise installments, with rumors indicating that Jason Statham may be the next high profile star to join the franchise.
As it turned out, Brit actor Luke Evans nabbed the role Statham was thought to take initially and
Fast & Furious 6 was shot by itself. According to today’s big scoop from
AICN, much of that initial plan may actually hold true.
According to their sources, at the end of
Fast & Furious 6, when Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker)’s team of stunt drivers successfully help out Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in taking down Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) in exchange for their freedom, there’s an additional scene that leads into
Fast & Furious 7.
It may end up being a post-credits sequence much like the tease of Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) returning in the
Fast Five button, but this one starts with an inside-car view of someone’s hands on a steering wheel of a parked car, with Japanese voices coming though a police scanner in the vehicle. An external shot reveal it to be a custom reinforced Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
The scanner asks for all units to respond to a car chase between a black and orange Mazda RX-7 and a grey Nissan 350Z, and so the Mercedes books it in pursuit. We still don’t see the driver but the Mercedes is running parallel on another street to the high-speeding Mazda and Nissan, before cutting left, onto the same road, and sideswiping the Mazda, flipping it as a result, with practically no damage to the Mercedes.
The mystery Mercedes stops and out steps… Jason Statham, as Ian Shaw,
brother to Luke Evans’ character. He walks up to the flipped over Mazda RX-7 and in it sits Han Seul-Oh (Sung Kang). That’s right. The franchise has come full circle and merged with
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, director Justin Lin’s first entry into the series (he’s directed every installment since).
Mind blown? FYI, this isn’t Jensen Ames Statham from
Death Race or Frank Martin Statham from the
Transporter series or Handsome Rob Statham from
The Italian Job, this is Ian Shaw Statham from
Fast & Furious, typecast car skills included.
We can therefore assume the grey Nissan is The Drift King Takashi’s (Brian Tee) ride. Will Lucas Black return to the franchise as Sean Boswell? Hit me up on Twitter @rob_keyes and let me know if you dig this idea.
