In a new report on The Old Guard getting a sequel that will start filming early next year, Vin Diesel told Variety that he has writers working on a Fast & Furious spinoff for Charlize Theron‘s character, Cipher. While Theron’s character was the main villain in the eighth film in the franchise, The Fate of the Furious, she spent most of the latest installment, F9, inside a glass box doing hacker… stuff. A spinoff would give her character more ample use of screen time.
Whether or not the Cipher spinoff pans out, it does signify the Fast & Furious‘ franchise efforts to do better by its female characters. In a significant move to push the car series into having better gender representation, Michelle Rodriguez held out on returning for F9 until the studio agreed to hire a female writer. “You should evolve with the times, not just pander to certain demographics that are stuck,” she told Bloomberg back in 2019.
Rodriguez also pushed for her character, Letty, and Jordana Brewster’s Mia to finally have a meaningful onscreen conversation in F9. “Michelle was like, ‘Dude, we’ve never had a scene together. We’re always secondary with the guys. We don’t interact. We have a sisterhood. We need to explore this,’” Brewster told Insider. “Michelle’s always been very outspoken about not doing anything that isn’t true to character, and that means not placating the guys, that means not playing second fiddle to the guys.”
(Via Variety)