Vin Diesel wasn't going to cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but the action star changed his mind after striking a deal with Universal Pictures. Diesel has been part of the Fast & Furious franchise since the beginning, as he starred as Dominic Toretto in the original 2001 movie. With the current popularity of the franchise, Diesel has become the face of Fast & Furious, appearing in eight of the franchise's ten films.
It is easy to now think of Fast & Furious as Diesel's franchise, but that was not the case early on. He might've been a co-lead in The Fast and the Furious opposite Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner, but Diesel didn't return for 2 Fast 2 Furious. His absence from the series nearly continued with Tokyo Drift as well. Outside of a cameo at the very end of the movie, Toretto had no role to play and Diesel's time with the franchise was thought to be nearly over. In fact, Diesel only agreed to do a cameo in Tokyo Drift if Universal gave him the rights to another franchise in return.
When Universal and Diesel's team were negotiating his return for Tokyo Drift and the fourth installment of the franchise, Diesel proposed to bypass his usual actor's fee for the Tokyo Drift cameo. In exchange for his time though, Diesel wanted Universal to give him the theatrical rights to the character of Riddick. Diesel already had played the character in two Riddick films at that time and wanted to make sure he was in charge of the franchise's future. Universal agreed to this demand and gave Diesel's production company One Race the rights to Riddick in exchange of his cameo in Tokyo Drift.
After completing the deal for Riddick's rights, Diesel and One Race pushed forward to make a third film in the Riddick franchise. The movie was released in 2013, nine years after Diesel secured the rights, and performed moderately well thanks to a small budget. Diesel still has plans for the franchise to continue as well. He announced in 2014 that Riddick 4: Furya is in the works and has reiterated more recently that the script is almost done. Diesel has even teased that a Riddick TV series could be in the works.
Trading the rights to a franchise for a cameo in a different franchise isn't the type of deal that happens regularly in Hollywood, but in this case it proved to be a win-win scenario. Universal managed to secure Diesel's place in the Fast & Furious franchise, while Diesel's stardom was raised from the continued success of the films. This not only gave Diesel confidence that Riddick could be a success, but his continued relationship with Universal led to the studio becoming the distributor for Riddick again. With development on Riddick 4 taking several years, Universal has still benefited from Diesel's presence in the Fast & Furious franchise. Universal and Diesel's shared success should do keep going when F9 is released in 2021, and the need for Dom to cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift made it all possible.
