The Fast and Furious franchise is getting some new parts under the hood.
Daniel Casey has been tapped to write Fast and Furious 9, the latest installment of Universal’s billion-dollar franchise becoming the first new writer on the movie series in over a dozen years.
Chris Morgan had been the chief writer of the franchise, writing every single movie since the third installment, 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, continuing to pen scripts all the way through 2017’s The Fate of the Furious. Morgan hasn’t left completely, he just switched vehicles: He is now writing and producing the tentatively titled Hobbs and Shaw, the Furious spinoff to star Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham.
Fast 9 will be directed by Justin Lin, the director who helmed four of the Fast movies and who is returning to the franchise after sitting out the seventh and eighth installments. Lin, whose Fast titles have grossed almost $2 billion dollars, is seen as the filmmaker who took a movie series based on street racing culture and took it to new heights, turning it into a global action franchise.
Vin Diesel is set to return as the star in the project that is slotted for a April 2020 release.
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Neal Moritz is producing via his Original Film banner, Diesel through his One Race Films, and Lin via his Perfect Storm Entertainment.
Casey is a rising scribe who wrote Kin, a sci-fi thriller produced by 21 Laps and being released by Lionsgate on Aug. 31.
One script that generated buzz for the writer, and which sources say was a factor in Casey nabbing the Fast gig, was The Heavy, a subversive take on the superhero genre that J.J. Abrams is producing for Paramount. That project landed a director last week and is on the fast track.
Casey is repped by CAA, Writ Large and Hansen Jacobson.
