I still remember when Chris Morgan, the writer-producer, was on the set of Hobbs and Shaw, Hiram, Johnson’s right-hand man, began talking about Red One. They were filming the Fast & Furious spin off car and helicopter chase near the cliff in Kauai and with the red dirt flying around, Morgan says he could only afford to partly focus on the plot at the time.
But that evening, Garcia, who is actually the president of Johnson’s Seven Bucks production company continued to pitch, this time going for the entire premise of the storyline of an action-comedy that involves the abduction of Santa, J.K. Simmons and his head of security with Johnson, partnering with a complicit rogue Chris Evans.
“I was prepared not to, however, the show was something I really, really loved. I said, you know, I actually think it’s got a pretty positive message that I think is pretty cool and that the world needs. And that we said we would attempt to and pull this thing off,” Morgan said to The Hollywood Reporter.
They then presented the idea of makings of Red One to Johnson and Dany Garcia both partners in Seven Bucks, which loved the idea. And, in one of the career’s firsts, Morgan did not aggressively market the film after they began what they called taking it around.
“Finally we have a true Christmas wedding for Dwayne who has been dying to do a Christmas movie for years.
He is in effect the king of Christmas. “And we had Johnson and Dany Garcia join in and then all of a sudden, hey, let’s take it to every studio,” explains Morgan.
Hiram is the one who sold this movie into a pitch You know, in order to get it fully financing it. I wanted him to get that experience of getting in there and doing it. Which is why he sold it in every single room and then Amazon finally entered the arena.
Morgan has been a key architect of the Fast & Furious franchise ever since the third installment, The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift (2006). He has authored or co-authored and or produced every single chapter from there onwards with the exception of F9.
However, the most remixed movie in the series is the Japan-based story of his initial story that presented him to the film fans as the standalone sequel of Jaqueville was received coldly when it was released.
“How could it not? And here is the man who is, like, one of the best directors of all time, and he watches my picture. By the way: I later talked to him about it, Morgan adds. “How sweet it is to be where we are today listening to what people want with it when all along we’re the only ones who have ever loved it for what it was.”
When Johnson showed up a couple of Fast movies later and suddenly returned to feature in the primary Fast storyline in Louis Leterrier’s Fast X, he revealed that with the Hobbs movie, he mysteriously intimated that he had resolved his conflict with Vin Diesel and that a Hobbs movie would lead to what is now being considered Fast 11.
While at the time of this post, no conversation about Jason Statham’s Shaw anymore, then there was discussion to the extension of this latest spin-off entails Jason Momoa’s Fast X uber-villain, Reyes.
“[The release schedule] is, indeed, something that is rather an issue of the studio.” It’s about what comes when and how, but I consider myself useless to figure it out further, Morgan says. What I can tell you is that it’s akin to working on Hobbs and Shaw script. ‘Oh okay, well let’s see how that turns out,’ but I was looking forward to it.”
More specifically, below, during a recent conversation with THR, Morgan also explains why the ending of Red One is feel-good in an unsettling time in the world, before saying the genre he’s.
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