Vin Diesel wants a credit from the Producers Guild of America for his work on the Fast & Furious movies. Over the course of two decades, the Fast & Furious brand has evolved from a one-off movie about illegal street racing into a multi-billion dollar juggernaut of a franchise. Diesel, of course, has been a key part of the series since the beginning, having played Dominic Toretto in all but one of the eight mainline films so far. He's additionally served as a producer going back to 2009's Fast & Furious and was even credited as an EP on Netflix's animated TV show, Fast & Furious Spy Racers.
By assuming greater control over the creative direction of the franchise, Diesel has also come into conflict with other key Fast & Furious players in recent years. Most notably, he and Dwayne Johnson (who hopped aboard the bandwagon with 2011's Fast Five) clashed over the filming of 2017's The Fate of the Furious and Johnson's plans to develop a solo movie based around his character, Luke Hobbs. And while Diesel and Johnson publicly put their feud to rest last fall, it appears the former is once again going to war over his artistic contributions to the brand.
In a since-deleted Instagram post last weekend, Diesel claimed he's currently "trying to mitigate a war" between Universal and the PGA, which he referred to as the "Prejudice Guild of America." According to Variety's sources, Diesel's post was a reference to his ongoing battle to receive a PGA credit for his work on the Fast & Furious franchise. It's reportedly something he's been trying to receive for just about every film in the series so far, but has continuously been denied.
Contrary to his deleted post, Variety's sources say this conflict is strictly personal for Diesel and doesn't involve Universal. In a functional sense, the PGA mark is only really important because it allows producers to be nominated for and win the Best Picture Oscar. This could well be the primary reason Diesel's so determined to get one. The actor campaigned heavily for The Fate of the Furious to receive attention from the Academy while he was promoting it and will probably do the same in the build-up to Fast & Furious 9 next year. Problem is, Variety reports a number of people involved in making these movies take issue with the idea of Diesel being a top-tier creative and point to his diva behavior (including, showing up hours late on days when expensive stunts are being filmed) as a big obstacle to him gaining credit from the PGA.
With Fast & Furious 9 having been delayed to 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic, it may be some time before we get an update on Diesel's ongoing battle with the PGA. By this point, though, Fast & Furious fans are probably used to this type of behind-the-scene drama on the franchise. In addition to Diesel's beef with Johnson, Tyrese Gibson infamously called The Rock "selfish" for making the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff and threw shade at the film when it opened lower-than-expected at the box office. Similarly, Michelle Rodriguez called out Fast & Furious writer Chris Morgan for promising to deliver "Justice for Han" last year, saying he has "nothing to do" with Han's since-confirmed return in F9 (which Morgan didn't write). No such thing as bad publicity, right?
Source: Variety
