There’s at least one small update regarding actor and action star Donnie Yen’s involvement in an upcoming Sleeping Dogs movie. It was back in March of last year in a Deadline exclusive that the Ip Man franchise star was confirmed with the actor reaffirming the film’s production this past February.
Universal Pictures
It was to be expected since its confirmation in late 2015, and now it looks as if things will officially take shape for the spin-off corner of Universal Pictures’s Fast And Furious saga. On Friday, new report from Deadline presented news on good terms that the studio is keen on efforts to manifest a spin-off that will join action movie stars Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in their own movie with a script by franchise scribe Chris Morgan.
The news comes following the latest release of the eighth installment of the high speed action movie franchise, The Fate Of The Furious, and while I won’t divulge the specific twists and details that outline the prospects of this union, the film did greatly in invoking a buddy element that would bode well for both actors in their current positive chemistry. Ironically it also comes in the wake of other news that the film would have been signaled by an end credits scene filmed by producer Neal Moritz with Johnson and Statham featured which Fast franchise star Vin Diesel had removed from the theatrical cut in post production, otherwise joining in the toxic pot-stirring of long-reported animosity between both Diesel and Johnson; Whether or not that scene will get woven into the DVD and Blu-Ray release remains to be seen. I mourned about this in my review of the film which you can read here.
Johnson, who voiced his interest for a spin-off back in 2013, has been with the franchise since debuting the role of D.S.S. Agent Luke Hobbs in Justin Lin’s Fast Five in 2011. The film was second of the 3-film package bolstered by Diesel’s return to the fray in a starring and producing role beginning with Fast & Furious in 2009, the fourth film of the franchise following The Fast And The Furious from Rob Cohen and 2 Fast 2 Furious from John Singleton. Lin took the mantle for the 2006 third installment, The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift, and stayed for all four movies until helming Furious 6, tacking an outro scene debuting Statham as Decard Shaw, a villain role weaving all four movies through to director James Wan’s billion dollar blockbuster, Furious Seven.
F. Gary Gray sits at the helm for the new movie which released in theaters from Universal Pictures on April 14, 2017 and has earned just over $685 million dollars as of this article. The main canon still has two films currently dated for April 19, 2019 and April 2, 2021 with directors yet to be determined. As for the spin-off…well… I’d say now would be a good time to propose the addition of a certain martial arts action star which I opined about earlier this week.
Here’s to hoping the powers that be will listen!
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Kell is one of the last Travelers—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes.
