Last April, it was revealed that Justin Lin, longtime director in the “Fast & Furious” franchise, surprisingly (and abruptly) departed his gig as filmmaker for “Fast X,” and was replaced in very short order by “Now You See Me” director Louis Leterrier. While the exact reasons for the departure are still unknown (though there has been some behind-the-scenes reporting), what we do know is that Leterrier had to quickly play catch up to get the huge blockbuster back on track. But what we didn’t realize, until now, is just how fast and expansive the replacement process was.
In a new interview with Esquire, Louis Leterrier broke down the sequence of events that led to his replacing of Justin Lin as filmmaker for “Fast X.” And honestly, even if you already knew that it happened quickly, there’s no way you could have guessed that everything, including a full rewrite of the script, happened in a matter of four days.
Leterrier began by explaining that he was called by Universal executives in the middle of the night. At first, he ignored the call until he got a message that it was incredibly urgent and they needed him to read a script ASAP to decide whether or not he wanted to direct the film. This led to a series of meetings happening immediately after.
“I then had these meetings, and it went really well, and three days later, I was on a plane, and landed, and from that first phone call till my first day calling action was maybe a four-day period,” he explained. “The day I landed was not a shooting day. I landed at 11:00am and it was a half a day of prep for the entire movie.”
Leterrier added, “I read the script four times on the plane, and I said I had some ideas, and they said, ‘Great, because the whole third act is changing. Can you rewrite it tonight?’ I was literally on no sleep. I’d been on no sleep for days.”
As the filmmaker goes on to explain, you can’t just rewrite the third act without it greatly affecting the rest of the script. This meant that the full script needed a wholesale rewrite.
“Obviously, this was not going to be set in stone. But I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, I’ve got some ideas,’ and started writing,” Leterrier said. “And obviously, since the third act was changing, I needed to change the first act. And when you rewrite the third act, and the first act, the second act has to go. So basically I had to on the fly rebuild the airplane.”
If that sounds bonkers, you’re not wrong. Typically, the prep time for these massive blockbusters (and reports say that “Fast X” has a budget of over $300 million) is incredibly long and detailed. And while we have heard of studios such as Marvel rewriting portions of a script during production, typically these aren’t full-on rewrites. And even if they are, they’re given more than four days to make it happen.
All of this to say, it is insane that all of this happened last April/May and the film is arriving a year later. If “Fast X” is even remotely coherent and enjoyable, it’s basically a miracle. But not only does this film need to be passable, “Fast X” probably needs to earn more than $1 billion worldwide to not be a total disappointment. If Leterrier’s film earns a ton of money and moderate reviews, this would be nothing short of a complete and utter victory for the filmmaker.
“Fast X” is set to arrive in theaters on May 19.
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