The Fast & Furious franchise is defined by four things: cars, Coronas, a surprisingly complex cinematic timeline, and, most importantly, family. Shockingly, the family may be falling apart.
After news broke earlier this week that the release of the ninth Fast & Furious film was getting pushed back from 2019 to 2020, Tyrese Gibson took to Instagram on Thursday to express his frustration. Tyrese (Fast & Furious’s comic relief, Roman Pearce) blamed Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson (special agent Hobbs, eternally drenched in body oil) for making the franchise about himself instead of the “#FastFamily,” presumably referring to the Fast & Furious spinoff Johnson is making with Jason Statham (who plays the villain turned good guy Deckard Shaw). Variety confirmed on Thursday that the spinoff is slated for July 26, 2019.
In multiple Instagram posts, Tyrese spoke directly to “Dewayne,” explaining that he’s upset that the actor went ahead with the spinoff and that other stars in the series were offered their own films but turned them down. “I was simply fighting to keep the family together what makes us great is when you see us all TOGETHER we don’t fly solo,” Tyrese wrote in one caption.
Though dramatic, Tyrese’s posts weren’t too earth-shaking. He’s one of the most infamous oversharers in Hollywood. Case in point: HBO’s 2017 docuseries The Defiant Ones opens with a 2014 video posted on Facebook of Tyrese prematurely leaking the news of Apple’s acquisition of Dr. Dre’s Beats. “Tyrese fucked that up,” Snoop Dogg eloquently puts it in the doc. So for him to be sounding off wasn’t surprising.
But then the head of the family got involved, and now we’ve got serious beef on our hands. Thursday night, Vin Diesel (Fast & Furious’s leading man, Dominic Toretto, bastion of family values) went on Instagram—the place to subtly-but-not-subtly-at-all air out all Fast-related grievances—and posted a photo of himself, Gibson, and their late Fast & Furious costar Paul Walker with the caption “Brotherhood…”
Diesel siding against Johnson isn’t particularly surprising. The costars reportedly had to be separated during the filming of Fate of the Furious, and Johnson took to Instagram (there it is again!) after production was over and called one of his costars a “candy ass,” a jab that was confirmed to be aimed at Diesel.
Gibson has since screenshotted Diesel’s post—which had a like from another Fast & Furious costar, Ludacris—saying “44 million just got the memo,” a nod to Diesel’s followers on Instagram. (While Ludacris hasn’t directly referenced the Johnson drama, he did post a photo of himself with Diesel on Thursday in the studio, saying “the world will soon find out about this mans hidden skills,” which honestly sounds like a threat.)
Johnson hasn’t addressed the Fast & Furious drama on social media just yet—he’s currently just posting a lot from the set of Skyscraper, an action film scheduled to come out next year—but with the rest of the Fast cast mounting a revolt against him, it may be only a matter of time.
The silver lining here? While Fast 9 is tragically delayed—robbing us of quality time with the famiglia for an extra year—at least we can watch this drama unfold over the next three years.
