While directors leaving a movie before it begins filming isn’t an uncommon occurrence, it’s rare you’ll find instances where they leave in the midst of production. Arguably the biggest recent example of this was when director Justin Lin, who’d been contributing to the Fast & Furious franchise since 2006’s Tokyo Drift, left Fast X after just one week of filming. Nearly two full years after this high-profile exit from one of the biggest 2023 movie releases happened, Lin has opened up about how he feels about it.
Lin stopped by the Happy Sad Confused podcast to do a watch-along of Tokyo Drift with host Josh Horowitz. Understandably though, Horowitz inquired about Lin walking away from Fast X, which was going to be his sixth time helming a Fast & Furious movie. The filmmaker started off by saying:
