One of the biggest twists from 2023’s Fast X wasn’t something from the movie itself, but rather its production in real life. Just one week into filming, Justin Lin, who’d directed five of the previous Fast & Furious movies, departed the blockbuster, resulting in Louis Leterrier taking over helming duties. At the time, it was reported that this move stemmed from “creative differences” with franchise lead Vin Diesel. Now new details have come out about why Lin left Fast X, and they come with some wild reveals about scrapped plot points involving Jason Momoa’s Dante.
In an excerpt from Indiewire for the unauthorized book Welcome to the Family, which releases this week and covers the history of the Fast & Furious franchise, it’s mentioned that a “key source of discord” between Justin Lin and Vin Diesel, as well as actor’s sister/fellow producer Samantha Vincent, “centered around the script and its ending.” Specifically, there were drafts of the Fast X script where it was revealed that Dominic Toretto’s son, affectionately referred to as “Little Brian,” was actually the biological son of Dante, the movie’s main antagonist. While some thought this was “the perfect, if deeply dark, way,” for Dom to grapple with the concept of family, in that he’d be protecting a boy who wasn’t biologically his own, others, including Diesel, didn’t approve of the twist.
