Fast & Furious 9 - aka F9 - has been delayed a whole year due to the coronavirus outbreak, which brings up the question of whether or not the franchise will continue to prop up the beer brand Corona in the films. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) has been cracking Coronas under the hood of the Fast & Furious franchise ever since the original The Fast and the Furious back in 2001. As he later says to Paul Walker's undercover fed Brian O'Conner, "You can have any beer you want... as long as it's Corona."
The beer has subsequently appeared in the fourth, sixth, and seventh installments of the franchise. Dom and Brian repair their fractured relationship over it (Fast & Furious); Han nurses a Corona while he mourns Gisele's death (Fast & Furious 6); and Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) lures Dom into the clandestine government fold with a bucket of Coronas (Furious 7). Throughout the franchise, Corona beers have been a staple and a defining characteristic of Dom and his family. But could that change due to coronavirus?
Corona, a Mexican lager produced by Cerveceria Modelo and owned by Belgian super brewer AB InBev, has - astonishingly - never paid a single dime for its inclusion in the Fast & Furious franchise, but has apparently been given $15 million worth of product placement by the films. As revealed by executive producer Neal Moritz revealed on Bill Simmons' podcast, Corona was the unofficial official beer of the Fast & Furious movies. Now that the coronavirus outbreak is running rampant around the world, it has allegedly scared consumers into avoiding the Corona brand (although according to Corona's US producer, Constellation Brands, this is not the case), can we still expect to see Dom and his family consuming Corona in what is now next year's installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, Fast & Furious 9?
The eighth installment of the Fast Saga, The Fate of the Furious, actually featured zero appearances by Corona lager. Instead, the characters swapped Budweisers and Stella Artois. This may be because the parent company behind all three finally paid for the express inclusion of those particular two, but that's yet to be confirmed.
Regardless, the ongoing coronavirus crisis may put the Fast & Furious franchise's usage of the Corona brand to bed. It's an extremely tense time, and the media is plastered with coronavirus news and updates every hour of the day. When Fast & Furious 9 finally releases in 2021, if a character were to mention or even hold a Corona to their lips, the first thought to pass the audience's brain would be a virus that, hopefully, by that point has been eliminated and is no longer a concern.
Still, Universal Pictures will most likely be unwilling to remind their fans about the tragic coronavirus pandemic of 2020, even though there's no real connection between the beer and the virus. It's most likely that their unofficial endorsement of Corona will come to an end, resorting instead to their characters drinking Budweiser and Stella Artois, as with The Fate of the Furious. That, or they'll make a joke about it.