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Holding Out Hope for Fast 9 Is Rather Pointless Right Now

The release schedule of the most popular movie with the worldwide community of car enthusiasts is starting to sound like a broken record. Fast 9 has been delayed once more.
Vin Diesel will be facing John Cena in Fast 9, whenever it comes out 1 photo
Photo: Universal Pictures
At the end of this week, Universal Pictures has decided that, instead of May 2021, Fast 9, the ninth installment in the hugely popular and hugely bankable Fast and Furious franchise, would be coming out on June 25, 2021. The delay isn’t by a lot this time, but it is telling for the current situation in Hollywood. And that would be that profit weighs heavier in the balance than fans’ expectations.

This isn’t to say that Universal, or any other movie studio big or small, owes anything to the general public or even the diehard fans who have carried franchises through their roughest patches. Movie studios don’t owe us anything, and of course they’re always going to make the decisions that maximize their profits.

That said, it does feel as if this particular conundrum we’re all in since 2020 would require an exception to the golden rules. I’ll explain.

Fast 9 was originally scheduled to come out on May 22, 2020. By the time the U.S. and most of the world went into the first lockdown due to the ongoing health crisis, the promo trail for the film had already kicked off, with the release of all sorts of teasers and interviews with the principal cast. As the crisis progressed and it became more clear that it was very serious, Universal took the same approach as all other studios with a tentpole due: it repeatedly pushed back the date, hoping for the best.

Vaccine campaigns are now underway internationally and, by February 7 this year, a light was flickering at the end of the tunnel. At long last! So, at this year’s edition of the Super Bowl, Universal debuted a new teaser, promising a theatrical release “soon.” It was followed by the announcement that the film would be out this May, much to the joy of fans.

Predictably, the decision to push the release date further back has nothing to do with health concerns, but maximization of profit. Fast 9 comes with a budget of $200 million before marketing, which means: number one, there will be a ton of awesome car chases, car-fu and general car-mayhem; and number two, Universal is hellbent on breaking a profit, not cutting losses.

This means that, when F9 does drop in theaters, it has to perform as it would have in a regular year, one in which social distancing was but some fancy term introverts used to keep others at bay. Given the international context, the bulk of the box office revenue has to come from the U.S. and China, the two biggest markets. While China seems to be on track to the “new normal,” the U.S. is far from it, and even under the most optimistic scenarios, it won’t be for the remainder of 2021.

Universal has a deal with several major theater chains, promising an exclusive theatrical run before taking Fast 9 to streaming. In layman terms: the studio will bring the movie to premium streaming services, but only after it’s been three weeks in theaters, to ensure it recoups its budget. Streaming might be the biggest thing today, but it’s not a winning solution for tentpole productions with hundreds of millions in budget. A film with F9’s fanbase would still make a lot of money, but it would not make the kind of money Universal wants.

So basically, in fewer words, Universal is holding out, refusing to bring Fast 9 to streaming, because it’s greedy.

The move feels widely ungenerous toward the community of fans. The Fast and Furious fanbase, comprising both legit car enthusiasts and movie fans, has carried an unlikely small film into the big league, turning it into one of the most successful film franchises of all times. The fans turned the films into record breakers, and the stars in it into A-listers. The fans kept the franchise going when it lost one of its leading men (RIP, Paul Walker), an unprecedented occurrence. The fans deserve better.
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About the author: Elena Gorgan
Elena Gorgan profile photo

Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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