F9 star, Tyrese Gibson, wants to see Rihanna, Matt Damon, and Denzel Washington join the upcoming sequel. The Fast & Furious franchise has grown quite a bit since its humble beginnings in 2001 as a street racing film to become Universal Picture's most successful film franchise. With the release of F9, the franchise has now raced past the X-Men series to become the fifth highest-grossing film franchise of all time.
Along the way, the cast of the Fast & Furious franchise has grown to feature a wide variety of actors. The franchise that started with Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michell Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster has now grown to feature musicians (Ludacris, Bow-Wow, and Cardi B), professional fighters (Dwayne Johnson, John Cena, and Gina Carano), and even Academy Award winners (Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron). Each film adds impressive new members to the franchise history and with the next two installments set to be the last ones, it is safe to assume the filmmakers will want some big names.
Tyrese Gibson, who plays Roman Pearce in the franchise, recently spoke at a round table for The African-American Film Critics Association about who he would like to see join the franchise. He suggests Rihanna, Matt Damon, and Denzel Washington as his picks to join the franchise for various reasons. Damon, in particular, seems to be because his character Jason Bourne is a Universal Pictures franchise. Read what Gibson said below:
C'mon, Rihanna has to be in the next movie. She's gonna kill every red carpet there is....I just love her spice, she's sexy, she's a bad girl, and I think energy wise she'd be perfect for the Fast and the Furious. I'm putting that out there. I'm putting Matt Damon out there because he's a part of the Bourne franchise and that's another Universal franchise. And I'm also putting Denzel Washington out there who's the reason I started acting in the first place. Hopefully one of my requests that I'm putting in the universe will happen.
Rihanna actually has a working history with longtime Fast & Furious director Justin Lin, as she composed and sang the original song "Sledgehammer" for his 2016 film, Star Trek Beyond. Denzel Washington has taken on more action roles in the latter half of his career like The Magnificent Seven and The Equalizer. Matt Damon has made himself a nice side career cameoing in films such as EuroTrip, Thor: Ragnarok, and Deadpool 2, meaning that if the actor was willing and Universal allowed it, they could slip in a nice Jason Bourne reference.
The hopes of a Jason Bourne/Fast & Furious crossover fall in line with many of the stars of the franchises talking about potential crossovers. Gibson has spoken previously on wanting to see the Transformers in a future film, despite that being a Paramount property. Many have joked about a potential Jurassic World and Fast & Furious crossover given they are both major Universal Pictures properties. F9 even featured a fun in-joke referencing Universal-owned Illumination Entertainment, The Minions. The possibility of Jason Bourne joining the franchise after F9 may seem unlikely but not entirely impossible.