Netflix's new action-comedy Red Notice takes a pretty big jab at The Rock's Fast & Furious co-star Vin Diesel, seemingly continuing their long-running feud. The infamous feud between the two action stars has been well-documented for quite a few years now and is the reason The Rock says he won't return as Luke Hobbs for any mainline Fast & Furious installments in the future. With Red Notice, it is apparent that The Rock isn't backing down from his stance about Diesel, with a joke in the dialogue that is sure to throw fuel on the fire.
The feud between Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel went public back in 2016, where The Rock took his frustration with his Fast and Furious franchise co-star to Instagram, at the time not naming names but being very vocal about there being a conflict between them. Diesel later went on record saying how close he was with The Rock, even referring to him as a "younger brother," but Johnson quickly refuted that notion. Since then, Diesel has boiled their feud down to them both being "alpha males", whereas The Rock seems to see it as more of a difference in their creative visions and how they approach treating others. Their acrimonious relationship devolved to the point that Dwayne Johnson couldn't film scenes with Vin Diesel on The Fate of the Furious, and he was absent from F9 entirely. Whatever the truth of their feud, The Rock does not seem to be happy with Diesel in the slightest, and his frustration looks to be carrying over to his other projects.
He certainly has no problem with jokes at Diesel's expense popping up in non-Fast and Furious movies he's involved in, such as Red Notice, even if he's not the one to make them. The joke in question is a quick comment Reynolds makes at the end of the movie, where he mentions Vin Diesel's audition tape for the universally-panned movie musical Cats and how frightening it is to behold. Whether it was improvised by Reynolds or a deliberate jab potentially devised by The Rock is unclear, but it's certain to only further encourage their feud, despite Vin Diesel inviting him back to Fast & Furious for the tenth installment.
Clearly, the bad blood between them must be enough that time can't quite heal it, at least in The Rock's eyes. With a Hobbs & Shaw sequel already in the works, it seems that Johnson is still insistent about sticking to the main Fast & Furious franchise, at least as long as Diesel is involved. Instead, he's carving out his own mini-franchise within the long-running and remarkably successful series as Luke Hobbs, with Diesel's Dominic Toretto nowhere in sight.
But the end of The Rock and Vin Diesel's team-ups seems to only mark the beginning of his collaborations with Ryan Reynolds, both within the Fast & Furious franchise and outside of it. The door is wide open for Reynolds to continue co-starring as CIA Agent Victor Locke in the Hobbs & Shaw films, even if it's just for a quick cameo scene. And with Red Notice, Netflix is trying to launch their own franchise with the two stars, suggesting that Johnson and Reynolds are destined to do plenty more action films together.