Tyrese Gibson is blaming Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson for Fast & Furious 9 being delayed from its original release date and pushed back to 2020 instead. Beginning with The Fast and the Furious in 2001, the franchise initially was all about Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, but up-and-down returns with its first three sequels eventually led to more names being added to the franchise - most notably Johnson, starting with 2011's Fast Five - and the film franchise has thrived ever since (including billion-dollar-plus returns globally for the last two chapters).
While Johnson was already an established actor when he joined the Fast and Furious franchise, there's no doubt that the series has helped him become an international box office superstar. He's so big, in fact, that he's arguably become the face of the franchise; and his character Hobbs, along with Jason Statham's Shaw have become so popular that their tandem turn in The Fate of the Furious has led to the development of a spinoff film for the two characters.
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Apparently Johnson's success and career decisions are not sitting well with Gibson, who came aboard the franchise with the 2003 sequel 2 Fast, 2 Furious, and took a couple films off before rejoining it again with Fast Five. Last month, he made a public plea to Johnson to not delay Fast & Furious 9 on Instagram, claiming that his co-star had been ignoring his text messages.
Following Universal's announcement that Fast & Furious 9 has been pushed back to April 10, 2020, Gibson took to Instagram again and is clearly upset with Johnson, implying that the ninth chapter in the series is being delayed because of the Hobbs and Shaw spinoff (see below):
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Clearly there's a lot of trouble in the Fast & Furious family, which Universal is going to have to first clean up if the franchise is going to move forward in a civil manner and the studio wants to produce the final two Fast & Furious movies. Unfortunately (or maybe, fortunately), the studio has had to deal with spats before (see the much-reported feud between Johnson and Diesel during the production of The Fate of the Furious), so hopefully they have a crisis team already in place.
On top of that, the studio has to deal with Michelle Rodriguez following her threat to leave the franchise in July, saying that the female characters aren't treated with equal importance in the film series. Lucky for Rodriguez - who plays the key role of Letty in the franchise - she has the support of Diesel, who is also one of the main producer on the movie series.
NEXT: The Rock Hypes Fast & Furious Spinoff
Source: Tyrese Gibson
