The Fast and Furious franchise began in 2001 and was initially inspired by a magazine article about illegal street racing. However, in the two decades since its debut, it has ballooned into one of the biggest film franchises of all time in terms of box office success, and it remains a key blockbuster franchise for parent studio Universal Pictures.
The franchise has also reinvented itself several times over the course of its run, going from the crime to heist to spy genres while maintaining the same cast for nearly every main entry. That being said, some of the films have definitely made more money than others.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) - $158,964,610
The third installment in the franchise was a massive disappointment when it came to box-office gross, at least when compared to previous entries. Between moving the action to a new continent and focusing on completely new characters, Tokyo Drift had a lot going against it.
However, Vin Diesel's cameo at the end (which he made in exchange for the rights to the Riddick films) recontextualized the movie led to several "prequels" that would bring in much more success and help keep the franchise alive. It only took nine years to pay that cameo off.
The Fast and the Furious (2001) - $207,517,509
The Fast and the Furious proved to be a hit in 2001 for Universal Pictures. Featuring a plot vaguely similar to the original Point Break, it follows police officer Brian O'Conner as he infiltrates the underground world of street racing to uncover the perpetrators of car-based heists.
Although Brian is the main character, Vin Diesel's Dom Toretto would eventually come to be the star of the franchise, although it would take until the fourth movie for this to become the case. The film is also so far removed from where the franchise has ended up that it in some ways doesn't even feel like it's in the same universe.
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) - $236,350,661
Riding off of the success of the first film, Universal produced a second film with the meme-worthy title 2 Fast 2 Furious, featuring returning star Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner. The film also introduced Roman Pearce and Tej Parker, played by Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris, respectively.
The unique title has remained in the pop-culture imagination since the film's release, and with its increased success from the first film, Universal didn't hesitate to produce Tokyo Drift, one that definitely did not continue this trend of increasing success.
Fast & Furious (2009) - $360,366,870
Building off of Vin Diesel's Tokyo Drift cameo and the character of Han's death, 2009's Fast & Furious went back and told Dom's story after the first film, as he builds up another heist crew and is reunited with Brian, now an FBI agent.
Not only did this movie's success bring the franchise back into play, but Fast & Furious also features some underrated moments that stand out not only in the film, but in the series as a whole. Although neither the highest-grossing nor the most critically beloved of the series, it still managed to make an impact.
Fast Five (2011) - $626,137,675
With an almost $300 million increase in box office, Fast Five managed to bring together characters from every previous installment of the series so that Dom and this crew can pull off a daring heist against a Brazilian crime lord, while also introducing Dwayne Johnson's iconic Luke Hobbs.
Between its stunts, visuals, and thrilling climax, plus its ability to tie the franchise into a single film, it's no wonder Fast Five is Ranker users' second-favorite movie in the series. It also doesn't hurt that Fast Five can stand on its own: it doesn't require having seen any of the previous movies to appreciate the main plot.
F9: The Fast Saga (2021) - $726,229,501
Releasing during the COVID-19 pandemic may have hurt F9's overall performance, considering it's the lowest-grossing film of the series for the past ten years. However, that doesn't mean the box office it actually did manage to get wasn't still considerable.
Providing even bigger adventures for Dominic and his crew, it's clear that F9 left reality way behind in the dust, and outdoes every other film in terms of stunts. These movies have basically become a superhero franchise for Universal, and F9 more than any other makes the case that Fast and Furious deserves a comic book adaptation.
Hobbs & Shaw (2019) - $759,056,935
Although both Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw were introduced into the franchise as antagonists to Dom and his crew, and Hobbs himself at one point fought Shaw, the two have to team up in the self-titled Hobbs & Shaw to stop a superhuman threat to humanity.
Considering that the last film in the series to not feature Dominic Toretto as a main character, Tokyo Drift, underperformed at the box office, there was no guarantee that Hobbs & Shaw would do well without Vin Diesel, but it demonstrated exactly the opposite. Sure, maybe it didn't do as well as the two previous main entries, but considering its nature as a spinoff, it did great.
Fast & Furious 6 (2013) - $788,680,968
Even though Fast Five provided a nice resolution to the series, fans were still eager to see what Universal next had in store for these long-lasting heist pullers, and Fast & Furious 6 showed that the series could reinvent itself while also pulling in nearly $800 million.
Dom and his crew are offered to be pardoned for their crimes if they team up with their antagonist from the previous film, Luke Hobbs, to take down a group of mercenaries, a far cry from rival street racers. The stakes are also personal, since Letty is revealed to be alive after being thought dead in Fast & Furious. This was the beginning of the action-spy era of the franchise.
The Fate of the Furious (2017) - $1,236,005,118
Although the title of The Fate of the Furious definitely originated from someone writing "F8" on a board somewhere and realizing that it could be pronounced "fate", this eighth installment of the main series carries a lot of weight to it.
While Dom seems to have everything figured out in his life, it comes to pass that a new villain, Cipher, has kidnapped Dom's old girlfriend Elena, who, unknown to Dom, had a son by him, who has also been captured. Although Dom may be the villain of the franchise from a certain point of view, he is forced to be the villain in Fate, and it provides a nice change of pace to the series formula.
Furious 7 (2015) - $1,515,341,399
Furious 7 became a very personal film for Vin Diesel after the death of co-star Paul Walker, and it acted as a send-off to that beloved character in a truly touching and emotional way. The ending montage, set to Charlie Puth's "See You Again", is almost guaranteed to bring tears to a viewer's eyes.
Managing to juggle this weight with the franchise's action status could have gone wrong, but Furious 7 manages to serve well on both fronts, delivering one of the series' best villains in the form of Deckard Shaw. Like Fast Five, it could have been a fitting end for the series, but even still, its financial success speaks to it having a long cultural legacy.