Fast and Furious 11 gets release date and confirms return of Paul Walker character

Fast and Furious star Vin Diesel says Fast and Furious 11 will come out in April 2027, and will feature Brian O’Conner, originally played by Paul Walker who died in 2013.

Vin Diesel dropped these megaton teasers in front of a crowd at Fuelfest, a car show held in LA over the weekend.

“The studio said to me, Vin, can we please have the finale of Fast and Furious in April 2027,” he said.

“I said under three conditions. The first is to bring the franchise back to LA. The second thing was to return to the car culture, to the street racing.” This predictably got a big reaction from the audience of car obsessives in LA.

“The third thing was reuniting Dom and Brian O’Conner. That is what you’re going to get.”

Few are likely to complain about the series getting back to its roots, but bringing back Brian O’Conner may prove more controversial.

The character was played by Paul Walker, who died in a car accident in 2013. 2015’s Furious 7 still featured the actor, who died part-way through filming. The film-makers enlisted the help of Walker’s brothers to finish off his scenes.

That film was regarded as a fitting and well-done send off for the actor and character. But the franchise, which will apparently end with 2027’s Fast and Furious 11 (title TBC), isn’t done with Brian O’Conner just yet. Let’s hope it won’t rely on AI imagery to bring Paul Walker back to life.

The last movie in the series, 2023’s Fast X, left us on a cliffhanger that led to the upcoming movie being called Fast X: Part 2 online. But by the time the film actually comes out, we’ll be four years on from the release of that film.

It made $704 million in cinemas, which sounds like a real haul for a film series often described as “dumb” or “braindead.” But it cost a whopping $340 million to make, while series peak Furious 7 made upwards of $1.5 billion.

Still, for a series as long-running as this, Fast and Furious could have diminished over the years far more than it actually has.

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