HOBBS & SHAW Exclusive Interview With Writer Chris Morgan About The Franchise, #JusticeForHan, Cameos & More

With Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw arriving on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD earlier this week, CBM was recently granted an exclusive opportunity to sit down with franchise architect Chris Morgan and talk with him all about the past, present and future of Fast & Furious.

We start with his humble beginnings on the series with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and building toward the incomparable Fast Five, which proved to be just another launching off point as he and the creative team began expanding the universe with even bigger sequels, and now a spinoff.

He also chats with us about the #JusticeForHan movement, developing Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw, the iconic moments from his films, keeping those two very big cameos a secret and a whole lot more.

ROHAN: You started with Tokyo Drift - still one of the coolest titles ever - and then, you essentially became the grand architect of this entire Fast universe, writing every film after that. The first four films culminated into Fast Five, still one of my all-time favorite movies ever, and then the franchise had this enormous second life with Fast & Furious 6 and everything that’s come since.

While writing the first few films, did you ever envision this world getting so big and resonating with so many people across the globe? I mean, Dom’s family went from just being simple thieves to saving the world.

CHRIS MORGAN: Yeah, that's one of my favorite movies too, by the way. Fast Five. It just feels so fun and so good, it's when all the elements came together.

I would say this, when I first came on to do Tokyo Drift and we did that film, we included that tag at the end of the movie, with Dom (Vin Diesel) coming in, to, kind of, authorize it and suggest that if we're lucky enough, we might be able to do another one and lead into those characters.

Fortunately, the critical and crowd reaction to that sequence in the movie allowed the studio to say, “Okay, why don’t you guys try Fast 4 now? And, you can bring back Dom and Brian and Mia and Letty.” Then, that movie did well and that's what allowed us to do Fast Five.

When we started, we said we’re going to take these characters that we love, this crew and this family, and we’re going to add to it with this kind of contagonist, a really tough law man, who is hunting them down, and they've got to do this really ballsy lateral thinking, using cars in ways you're not thinking about, heist movie - and we're going to bring back all the characters from the earlier films and widen this universe.

That movie, when it did well, that's when we knew that moving forward we wanted to continue to expand this universe, that we wanted to plot out multiple films going forward, build bigger, like soap opera-y, story arcs over multiple films, but that is the moment, it was that film where it all clicked into place.

ROHAN: Fast Five is so awesome, absolutely love that movie.

You’ve written quite a few films now with key scenes and moments that have sort of become forever etched in pop culture - there’s obviously drifting from Tokyo Drift, the curved bullets from Wanted, the entire Danza Kuduro sequence from the end of Fast Five and then, of course, Paul Walker’s farewell and See You Again.

I grew up watching your stuff, so I remember how big some of these things were in high school/college, especially the Danza Kuduro scene. When writing, are you even a little bit conscious about creating an iconic moment that may ultimately live on forever? Or is it usually just a happy accident?

CHRIS: Oh man, when you hear that song, it just has that association with that happy ending of the movie. You just feel so good.

ROHAN: Definitely, I always just think about everyone taking a victory lap and Han and Gisele riding off into the sunset.

CHRIS: Back to your question, not really. I think the only real concern I have is, well, there's two things. One is - I'm a fan of films in general, but of these films in particular - when we’re coming up with a story or when we're on set or we're thinking about what comes next, I always put myself in the theater and I'm like, “What do I want to see as a fan? What would make me go, that's cool or I wasn't expecting that.”

And, then on the other side of it, when we're actually making it, it really is thinking about the audience and how will they react. “Are they going to expect this? Is this going to take them by surprise? Is this one of those moments that makes them go ‘Oh, shit!’” So, that that's what we design for and then, if it happens to connect in a way like you're talking about, that's lucky.

I don't think you can actually design it to try and hit that target. I think that's probably too hard and too mercurial of a target, but knowing - I worked in a video store for like ten years, an embarrassing amount of time, and over that time, getting to know the customers who would come in and I'd ask them all like, “What did you think of the movie? Did you like it? What did you like? What was your favorite scene?”

Now, you can kind of know the types of scenes that generally the public enjoy and move them in certain ways and I think that's really what we're striving for.

ROHAN: Yeah, that makes sense. Wouldn’t feel genuine otherwise. Also, just talking to you now, I keep picturing that chase in Fast Five where The Rock launches himself through a window to try and catch Vin Diesel and I remember that scene in the trailer just immediately selling me on the movie.

So, now, you’ve written Hobbs & Shaw, which is a completely different animal when compared to the Fast movies. What was that experience like for you transitioning from these massive ensemble pieces to a buddy cop movie in the same vein as Rush Hour or Tango & Cash?

CHRIS: I mean, I loved it. It was specifically - you’re right, by the way - made to have a slightly different feel. It was specifically designed that way. We wanted to make a movie that felt like it was grounded in the Fast world, as part of the Fast universe. The events of this movie have ramifications to the world of Fast and Furious, but we also didn't want it to feel like just another Fast film or like it's trying to be just another Fast film.

We wanted to give it its own identity, a little bit of a different flavor and to do that, we brought in David Leitch, our director, whose sensibilities are, he's literally the foremost guy on hand-to-hand combat action. I mean look at his films - John Wick, Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2 - and then tonally, he loves humor, so he wanted to make sure that we had that kind of poppy, fun humor. It felt a little bit lighter, a little bit more fun and gets its own distinct tone for the film, so we specifically were designing to give it just a slightly different tone, but it still has the same Fast DNA, like high stakes action, guys and girls busting on each other and all the things we love about the Fast films.

ROHAN: Yeah, all of these films really feel like you’re just going out to hang out with your friends.

Hobbs is obviously a major fan-favorite, but when did realize what you had with Deckard Shaw? I mean he’s the villain of Furious 7 and does this unforgivable act when he’s introduced, but then again, he’s also such a great character with this deep backstory and a very colorful family from his brother, mother and after this film, his sister as well.

Did you see his potential as a character from the get-go or was that something you stumbled across when further developing Furious 7 and Fate of the Furious?

CHRIS: Yeah, we knew early on, like when we went to go get Jason. - I had worked with Jason before on a movie called Cellular - and when we went to go get him, the discussion was, “Who is this character that he would play entering this franchise? What's his backstory? Where does he go?” And so, we always knew there was going to be this big arc with him and it evolves as you go and you develop it but, yeah, it was always in the cards to try and get to understand more about him and reveal more of him as we go forward. Not just a coincidental thing.

ROHAN: Yeah, I’m really enjoying his arc.

I know you’ve touched on this before, but I have to ask about #JusticeForHan. I mean I love Jason Statham, he’s super awesome, but Deckard Shaw still has a lot to make up for. I’m Indian-American, so Han was basically our guy, I mean he was basically representing for all of us, all Asians, and now, his killer has taken center stage.

Is that something you’re already actively working on? Finding a proper way for Shaw to atone for what he did? I know this movie had line where he alluded to it with his sister.

CHRIS: I’ll just answer it simply and just say, I loved the character of Han and I want to see that too, so I'm just going to leave that there...

ROHAN: Okay, no worries. Looking forward to seeing what you’re cooking up.

Vanessa Kirby really comes in and nearly steals the show in this movie as Hattie, were there ever any plans to bring back Luke Evans’ Owen? Or, is he still incapacitated?

CHRIS: Yeah, we always talk about the characters in the universe and for a lot of reasons, we'll end up being able to bring them in or not, but Owen is again, a character that I love, and that is still out there in the world and I would love to see more of him too.

ROHAN: He was a really great villain.

CHRIS: Yeah, and he’s also one of the nice human beings on the planet. Luke Evans is a dream to work with.

ROHAN: Hobbs & Shaw has these two huge cameos, which I felt like might’ve been some of the best kept secrets I’ve ever seen in Hollywood because I don’t think there was any buzz about either leading up to the release.

Were those roles specifically written for Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart or was that something that came together later?

CHRIS: We adapted them as we were in pre-production. We knew that we were going to try and bring Kevin in. That's something Dwayne and we have talked about a lot over the last couple of movies, so we knew it was just a matter of figuring out which role it would be and what fits Kevin's schedule and our schedule. Then, when we brought David Leitch on, David had just worked with Ryan on Deadpool 2 and as we were kind of tailoring the script, it became a real possibility that we might be able to get him to come in and do that role. So, then we kind of did a pass on it for him and Ryan weighed in on the pass and wrote a bunch of new stuff that was funny and then, we just passed it back and forth.

One of the things I do want to say is, it can be a nightmare sometimes trying to work out schedules with people in Hollywood because everybody is super busy, they all have projects that are going at the same time and a lot of times you'll have this idea to get someone to come in for a role and just because of conflicting schedules, it doesn't work out, but these guys would not let it not work out.

They literally, Ryan and Kevin, flew in at night, like late at night or early, early in the morning from their previous set. They had a day off or two days or whatever it was and they would fly in and come straight from the airport to our set. They would knock through their scenes and then fly immediately back to their other projects and keep working like they sacrificed a lot to surprise the audience, which is why we wanted to keep that surprise. We kind of wanted to honor the incredible effort these guys put forward to try and surprise the audience and let them enjoy a big secret with a big movie. So, they were cool. It's very difficult, normally, to get that done ahese guys were amazing.

ROHAN: Thank you so much for your time.

CHRIS: Thanks Rohan, I really appreciate it. Thanks for being a fan. I love that you love Fast Five.

ROHAN: Oh man, it’s one of the greatest movies ever. Thanks again.

 

Ever since hulking lawman Hobbs (Johnson), a loyal agent of America's Diplomatic Security Service, and lawless outcast Shaw (Statham), a former British military elite operative, first faced off in 2015’s Furious 7, the duo have swapped smack talk and body blows as they’ve tried to take each other down.

But when cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist Brixton (Idris Elba) gains control of an insidious bio-threat that could alter humanity forever — and bests a brilliant and fearless rogue MI6 agent (The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby), who just happens to be Shaw’s sister — these two sworn enemies will have to partner up to bring down the only guy who might be badder than themselves.