David Ayer Claims He Has “Nothing To Show” For Writing ‘The Fast And The Furious’

The “Fast And Furious” franchise may be one of the biggest in Hollywood at the moment, but one of its original creators feels like it’s left him behind. EW reports that David Ayer, who penned the the first film in the blockbuster series, “The Fast And The Furious,” said he has “nothing to show,” for writing the picture. But he also recognizes that’s part of the movie business.

READ MORE: James Gunn Told David Ayer The ‘Suicide Squad’ Directors Cut Will “Have Its Time To Be Shared”

Ayer talked about his involvement in the franchise on Jon Bernthal‘s “Real Ones” podcast. “Biggest franchise in Hollywood, and I don’t have any of it,” Ayer said about his involvement in the franchise. “I got nothing to show for it, nothing, because of the way the business works.” Ayer was brought into work on the original “The Fast And The Furious” script after Gary Scott Thompson and Erik Bergquist wrote previous drafts. The film’s idea came from a Vibe Magazine article entitled “Racer X,” about underground street racing culture. But after Ayer read earlier versions of the script, he knew he needed to ground the premise more firmly in reality.  

“When I got that script, that sh*t was set in New York, it was all Italian kids, right?” Ayer said to Bernthal. “I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m not gonna take it unless I can set it in L.A. and make it look like the people I know in L.A., right?’ So then I started, like, writing in people of color, and writing in the street stuff, and writing in the culture, and no one knew sh*t about street racing at the time.” So Ayer went out looking for real street racers in LA to see their culture firsthand. “I went to a shop in the Valley and met with like the first guys that were doing the hacking of the fuel curves for the injectors and stuff like that,” Ayer continued. “And they had just figured it out and they were showing it, and I’m like, ‘Oh f— yeah, I’m gonna put that in the movie.'”

But while producer Neal H. Moritz gave Ayers kudos on the film’s 20th anniversary in 2021, saying that the writer/director “was really able to lend credibility and a voice of these young people in this world,” Ayer still feels like the franchise left him in the dust. “The narrative is I didn’t do sh*t, right?” Ayer asked Bernthal. “It’s like people hijack narratives, control narratives, create narratives to empower themselves, right? And because I was always an outsider and because, like, I don’t go to the f*cking parties. I don’t go to the meals, I don’t do any of that stuff. The people that did were able to control and manage narratives because they’re socialized in that part of the problem. I was never socialized in that part of the problem so I was always like the dark, creative dude, beware.”

Ayer’s been vocal about his clashes with Hollywood executives before, like his struggles for creative control on 2016’s “Suicide Squad.” His issues on that film have him looking for as much freedom creatively as possible on movies, which he has on his upcoming feature “The Beekeeper,” due out next January. But Ayer’s conflicts with execs still sting. “F*ck all the middlemen, right?,” Ayer posited on “Real Ones.” “I get it. It’s up to me, I gotta self-rescue, right? I can f*cking whine about getting shot at and all the rounds I’ve taken over my career — I’ve gotta self-rescue, and I’ve gotta create an ecology where it’s safe for me to be creative, and that’s it. And that’s what I’m doing now.”

“The Beekeeper,” starring Jason Statham and Jeremy Irons, lands in theaters on January 12, 2024. As for the “Fast And Furious” franchise, “Fast X” made $719 million at the global box office this summer, and there’s two more films in the franchise on the way, as well as another movie starring Dwayne Johnson‘s Luke Hobbs.