When Fast Five was officially greenlit last February, Vin Diesel enthusiastically confirmed the announcement on his Facebook page and claimed that a sixth The Fast and the Furious movie was also in the cards. Not surprisingly, the cast and crew's focus shifted exclusively to production of the fifth installment and there hasn't been much talk about where the series might go from there.

If the enthusiastic response to the Fast Five trailer is any indication, fans seem to have built up a tremendous amount of goodwill towards the series. Coupled with the overwhelming success of the previous entry, Fast & Furious (which was the highest grossing film in the series to date), it seems unlikely that Universal would want to hit the brakes on this franchise any time soon.

So it should come as no surprise then that Diesel and producer Neal Moritz are ready to start making plans for the next sequel. Speaking with Collider, Moritz explains:

“In Vin and my mind we already know what the sixth movie is, we’ve already been talking about it. Vin and I have had numerous conversations about what that might be. And we’re starting to get serious about it right now. We just finished the movie like 4 or 5 weeks ago and we just needed a break, and now we’re gonna start focusing on that.”

In the same interview Moritz reveals that there's also a spin-off film in the works, which would be centered around Dwayne Johnson's bounty hunter character from Fast Five. Although they haven't begun tackling the script for that one just yet, Johnson is reportedly up for it and Moritz claims they'll be pushing forward with it soon.

If nothing else, The Fast and the Furious series has done an admirable job of keeping things fresh. Rather than finding new ways to tweak the same basic premise, these films have consistently tried to break some new ground. While that's  inevitably led to varying degrees of success for each installment, the overall result of that approach has been the sustained interest of a passionate fan base.

Sure, these movies have their staples but I think they've managed to satisfy the expectations of their fans and do something unique with all of those conventions. I'll admit that they're all pretty silly when you really get down to it, but the first and fourth in particular are ridiculously entertaining movies.

As for Fast Five - is there a red-blooded male out there whose interest isn't piqued in the slightest by Dwayne Johnson hunting down Vin Diesel? We'll find out if the film delivers when it hits theaters on April 29th, 2011.

Source: Collider.