In my review of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious (or F8 for those obsessed with keyboards), I said it was a particularly joyless and perfunctory entry in the usually hyper entertaining Fast and Furious series, with one exception: the scenes of hated-turned-begrudging-respect between Dwayne Johnson‘s Hobbs and Jason Statham’s Shaw were endlessly enjoyable. I wasn’t alone (in fact pretty much every critic agreed) and said there should be a spin-off with the two characters immediately. Thankfully, such a movie is happening, and now I’m even more excited by their choice of director. As Entertainment Weekly reports, David Leitch has signed on to direct the buddy action movie.
Leitch has a long career of stunts and fight choreography under his belt before turning to directing, first co-directing 2014’s breakout hit John Wick and later solo directing Atomic Blonde and the hotly anticipated Deadpool 2. I could literally not think of a better choice to direct the movie currently titled Hobbs and Shaw, and it points to the kind of action movie we’d be likely to get.
While the F&F movies have relied almost totally on vehicle-based chase and smash action scenes, Leitch’s background is in much more frenetic, hand-to-hand combat scenes showcase in Wick and Blonde. In F8, most of the scenes featuring Hobbs and Shaw were this kind of close-quarters fighting, which stood out against the car scenes, almost all of which had the cast members in close-up with nobody else around them, screaming into radios.
Everything seems to be lining up for Hobbs and Shaw to be the exact right way to spin-off easily the two best characters introduced into a franchise that’s been running out of gas for awhile. Statham and Johnson sparked off each other incredibly well in the previous two movies and a whole movie of that, without the utter drag that is Dominic Toretto and his “family,” puts it right at the top of my most anticipated list.
Plus, as we recently established, the Rock is both Dad and Daddy, so we’re pretty on board for whatever he does.
How stoked are you for Hobbs and Shaw? Let us know in the comments below!
Images: Universal
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
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