It turns out that one of the most iconic scenes in 2011's Fast Five was the result of a total accident. The Fast & Furious series is one of the top-selling film franchises of all time, dominating the box office with each subsequent release since the first movie debuted in 2001. While the first film was a street-level thriller inspired by a 1998 article in VIBE magazine ("Racer X" by Kenneth Li), the series has since shot into the stratosphere - both figuratively and literally. Each Fast & Furious film seems to outdo the last in terms of stunts and spectacle, but what happens when a written stunt goes totally awry in the middle of shooting on?

In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant about his docuseries Icons Unearthed: Fast & Furious, director and creator Brian Volk-Weiss revealed a fascinating Fast Five fact about the genesis of one of the film's signature stunts. In Fast Five, during the train heist sequence, a car that was supposed to [bump and ride alongside a speeding] train in fact crashed into the side. Rather than re-shoot the sequence, however, the production coordinated with another shoot happening at the same time, and smoothly incorporated the crash into the scene. Here's what Volk-Weiss had to say on the matter (edited for length and clarity):

Brian Volk-Weiss: The shot in the script is two people are fighting on top of a train, and then a car [bumps the] train while they're fighting. When they shot the car [bumping] the train, there was a complete mess-up, and the car crashed into the train.

[With] any other movie, the first thing they would have done is called the insurance company and been like, "Oh my God, we messed up. We need another five million dollars to redo the scene." The phone call they made was to the people in Atlanta shooting the interior of the train, and they were like, "We got great news. We just accidentally launched the car into the train, and it's stuck in the train. Could you refilm what you're shooting in Atlanta so that the car is actually embedded in the train, and the fight that had been on the roof happens inside the car with the car sticking out of the train?" And they did.

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The Risks Fast & Furious Takes Help Make It An Iconic Franchise

A car drags a vault in Fast Five

Something that is easy to forget given the heightened nature of modern Fast & Furious films is that many of the stunts, especially early on, were practical. In many ways, be it through risky stunts or bold creative decisions, the Fast & Furious franchise has succeeded in large part because of the way it has embraced those risks. Every Fast & Furious film has pushed the boundaries in one way or another, and sending a car to space in F9 is, in its own way, as risky as driving a Honda Civic under a speeding semi.

Icons Unearthed's Brian Volk-Weiss is a strong proponent of the idea that the Fast & Furious franchise succeeds in large part thanks to its willingness to embrace such risks and change. Reworking a major sequence in Fast Five based on an accident is certainly a bold move that would likely not have passed muster on a number of other blockbuster franchises. That sort of thing isn't unique to Fast Five either; in addition to detailing the improvised scene from Fast Five, Volk-Weiss spoke about how one of the most gripping sequences in 2 Fast 2 Furious was also an on-the-fly invention.

Brian Volk-Weiss: There's a scene in the movie, I remembered it vividly, where Paul Walker is driving down the street racing with [Eva Mendes], and they're not looking at the road ahead. They're staring at each other, so they're looking sideways while going a hundred miles an hour down a residential street. It is a brilliant scene; it is so stressful watching that scene, because you have [the car] driving a hundred miles an hour down a residential street, not looking at where they're going. We found out while making that episode that that scene was completely improvised.

The main storyline of the Fast & Furious series is expected to wrap up over the course of the next two films, but hopefully the winning spirit of the franchise will extend to its planned (and rumored) spinoffs. For those interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the box office behemoth, Icons Unearthed: Fast & Furious is set to offer stories told from the writers, directors, stunt coordinators, actors, and other players involved in the franchise. The series is likely to make any rewatch of the Fast & Furious films, including Fast Five, a rewarding one.

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Icons Unearthed: Fast & Furious premieres on January 9 through Vice TV.