With the April 2017 release date looming for Fast 8/Fast & Furious 8, filming is already underway for the latest installment in the lucrative The Fast and the Furious franchise. The series has toured the world over its 16-year history, and Fast 8 continues that globe-trotting tradition. Plans for the new sequel include shooting scenes in Cuba, and the crew is currently filming some explosive sequences in Iceland.
While most of the films have had their home base in Los Angeles, this year star Vin Diesel promised they’d be returning to the Fast and the Furious series’ roots. The inspiration for the very first movie came from an article about street racers in New York City, so Fast 8 will be heading to the Big Apple for much of its story.
Many productions shoot generic street scenes in other U.S. cities or even Canada, and Fast 8 will be no exception. The newest sequel will be setting up shop in Cleveland, Ohio, likely using the city to sub in for New York action sequences, as the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man 3 did back in 2006. While Cleveland’s film commission president Ivan Schwarz said it wasn’t quite official, Cleveland.com confirmed the filmmakers are already seeking out local crew members and vendors for the shoot.
The Cleveland site will be hosting Fast 8’s second unit, which likely means the local residents will be seeing stuntmen and stand-ins, rather than the lead actors. Principal photography is set for May, with the cameras rolling in both Atlanta and New York. Along with Diesel, director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) will be working with returning cast members Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, and possibly Eva Mendes. Charlize Theron has just been recently announced to join the cast as a possible villain.
“Fast and Furious 8” arrives April 2017 followed by “Fast and Furious 9” on April 2019 and “Fast and Furious 10” on April 2021.