Fate of the Furious: Are The Rock and Jason Statham the New Stars of the Franchise?

Without Paul Walker, Vin Diesel’s basically missing his better and brighter half, which leaves room for the Fate of the Furious to introduce a new bromance.

The beauty of Vin Diesel’s performance as Dominic Toretto stems from his conviction and relationship with both Paul Walker and Walker’s famous fictional character, Brian O’Conner. Without him, Vin Diesel’s left floundering in a high-octane world without the buster who always came back for him.

So it comes as no surprise that Vin Diesel allegedly had a hard time acclimating to set life with just Dwayne The Rock Johnson or Scott Eastwood. While The Rock and Jason Statham have been in previous movies, there was always a buffer and plenty of screen time to go around.

However, new reports detail that The Rock and Jason Statham may have gotten too much screen time. If you look at the trailers, I can see why that would be the case. They’re both a) elite action stars, b) oozing with edgy charm and c) seem like an Odd Couple pairing. Plus, Fate of the Furious‘ director F. Gary Gray knows how to use Statham very well considering their previous projects together, like The Italian Job.

According to The Wrap, Diesel cut a really juicy scene at the end of the film between his co-stars because he didn’t want it to interfere with his story.

One source disclosed:

"“They had early screenings where Johnson and Statham popped so much on-screen together that they were looking at doing a spinoff.”"

Apparently, the crew shot the scene without Diesel’s knowledge. And if Diesel sees the franchise as his most profitable baby, I can imagine why he wouldn’t want The Rock or Statham to get in on his glory.

However, the report also specifies that the scene may appear in the bonus features for the film. Since it looks like The Rock and Statham have a lot of fun cracking heads and talking smack to each other, I can also understand how Universal would want to squeeze as much money out of the duo as possible.

The Fate of the Furious is now playing in theaters everywhere.

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