Quick 10: French rewrote a $300 million film in 4 days!

On April 27, 2022, director Justin Lin left Fast X filming. Five days later, Universal announced that Louis Leterrier was taking the part.

he asked AlloCine For the trailer launch of Fast X, the French director told us that he got a call to say that he had been chosen to direct Fast X and that he was in London 4 days later on the set of the blockbuster. .

This choice is not accidental, as the director of The Incredible Hulk and Elusive Ones has already been approached by Universal to direct the films of the Fast & Furious saga. But the latter did not feel ready yet.

He admitted as follows:It’s amazing. This is the founding saga. For 20 years, the audience has been developing with the characters. So, it’s scary… but with my wife’s impulse, I finally agreed. Everyone treated me like family and after the second shoot it was my film. I was very well surrounded.”

Rewrite the script in 4 days

in the interview Esquire, Louis Leterrier explained that the film script was rewritten during these 4 days. The latter says he received several calls from Universal producers in the middle of the night. Then they were told that they needed to read the script immediately.

“I read the script which was amazing. It was by Justin Lin and it was great. We had many meetings, everything went very well. Three days later I was on a plane. Four days passed between that call and the first day of filming. And between those two moments I realized the gravity of this project and I was very scared.”

He adds: “I read the script four times on the plane and said I had new ideas. To which they replied, “That’s great because the whole third act changes. Can you rewrite it tonight?” We were the day before the shoot. I literally haven’t slept in days.“

But rewriting the last act meant reworking the rest of the script.

Leterrier says, “Obviously it wasn’t considered because there’s always rewrites, so I thought, ‘Let’s go!’

But since the third act was changing, I had to change the first act as well. And when you rewrite the third act and the first act, the second act has to change as well… so basically I had to rewrite everything.

With a pharaonic budget of 300 million dollars, the last part of the Fast & Furious saga was rewritten in a very short time. If there was a base, Louis Leterrier still had to do a lot of rewriting in a very short time.

The latter also took into account the opinions of various actors of the saga. During our meeting with the filmmaker on Thursday, February 9, the latter told us:The original cast has been working on these films for over 20 years. Therefore, I will take into account their advice.“

So Louis Leterrier involved the stars of the franchise in the writing process and added and changed certain passages according to everyone’s opinion. A titanic work, but a very rewarding one, if we believe his words: “It was a lot of work, but it was probably the most interesting and collaborative experience of my professional life..”

The final installment in the $6.6 billion saga, Fast X will tie directly into Fast & Furious 5. In Fast 5 (2011), Dom (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker) and their team defeat the notorious Brazilian drug kingpin Hernan. Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) throws his empire off a bridge in Rio de Janeiro.

Little did they know that his son Dante (Jason Momoa) watched helplessly as he spent the last twelve years hatching a hellish plan that would exact the ultimate price from Dom.

Dante takes Dom and his family to the four corners of the world, from Los Angeles to the catacombs of Rome, from Brazil to London, and from Antarctica to Portugal. New alliances will be formed and old enemies will reappear. But everything changes when Dom realizes that Dante’s main target is none other than his 8-year-old son.

Fast X hits theaters on May 17.