Actor: Thank you.

At this time, 100 Plaza Avenue, Universal City, California.

Universal Pictures, one of the eight major Hollywood film studios, is located here.

Once upon a time, Universal was the second oldest existing film company in Hollywood, with a very long history.

It is now the longest existing one.

Thanks to John Woo, the long-standing MGM has fallen into obscurity.

Universal Pictures has successfully outlasted its peers and has maxed out its qualifications.

And before the rise of Disney's live-action film business, Universal was the world's number one.

But it’s not easy to be the world’s number one now.

The reason is simpler.

Just like what Mr. Fan said in If You Are the One...

"I was caught up in the once-in-a-century financial crisis."

"This year's economic situation is so bad!"

"Three of the five largest investment banks have gone bankrupt, and nothing can be sold."

Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns are basically the same age as Universal Pictures, with the youngest being over 80 years old.

This time, Hollywood was also severely impacted by the takeover.

Under this premise, a meeting is being held in the senior conference room of Universal Pictures.

These big Hollywood companies are all managed by white men, and there are very few white women.

Of course, this is now.

In a few years, they will be colorful and difficult to distinguish between male and female.

Among a group of old white men, there is one whose appearance and body shape are quite inconsistent.

He is a big guy.

Bald head, muscular body, serious expression.

Communicating with a group of senior executives.

This person is one of the representative tough guy actors in Hollywood, Vin Diesel.

The so-called exchange was somewhat intense.

The two sides kept arguing with each other.

Vin Diesel, in particular, was extremely excited and kept on expressing himself.

Of course foreigners use English when they argue.

So I have to translate it.

After beautification, this is roughly what it means.

The humiliating defeat of "Fast & Furious 3" has become the biggest topic in the Hollywood film industry in recent years. Let's take a look at what former "Fast & Furious" actors have to say about it.

General Fan (Vin Diesel), who has always been straightforward, said bluntly that if "Fast and Furious" continues to be filmed like this, it might even lose face.

Vin Diesel: You said the production department has changed the leading actors so many times in each film. Has there been any change?

It's just the same old story.

Rob Cohen also has his reasons. What kind of actors am I leading?
Rob Cohen is the director of "Fast & Furious 1" and Vin Diesel's old partner. They also collaborated on "xXx".

He is also currently filming "The Mummy 3".

Who are you guys?
You let me take the picture!

What is the current level of "Fast and Furious"?

There are only a few of them, and you, Justin Lin, are also a director!

Can he direct?

I can’t direct it. I don’t have the ability to do so, you know!

If it goes on like this, it will become a B-grade movie.

Hey, after a B-level movie is made, it’s not even shown in theaters, it’s sold directly on discs, and then no one watches it.

Universal executive: On the other hand, "Fast & Furious 3" is also exploring new paths.

Vin Diesel (holding his fist): Oh, thank God!
I've already said that with a movie like this, you don't lay the foundation yourself.

Can you guarantee me that the next film will be profitable?

To be pragmatic, I advise you to understand the concept of racing movies first!
Little Paul (Walker) took pretty good pictures. Tell me why you replaced him.

The third part didn’t even have a reply, how can you tell me how to explain it?
Face, no face anymore...

Old Fan criticized "Fast and Furious", especially the third one.

The reason is also very simple.

The cost was 8500 million US dollars, but the box office was less than 1.6 million US dollars.

Moreover, due to the subject matter, the optical disc market performed very poorly and Universal suffered heavy losses.

It is also the only one of the three existing films in the "Fast and Furious" series that lost money.

Lao Fan scolded the movie and also scolded Justin Lin, the director of the third part.

In fact, it is just a disguised way of saying it.

"Look at it!"

"When I was there, it was the first part, how great!"

"Fast & Furious 1", the first film in the series, had an investment of 3800 million US dollars and a box office of over 2 million US dollars!
Global is making a lot of money.

This is how the idea of ​​expanding it into a series came about.

But Vin Diesel did not appear in the second film.

The first film was a duet between him and Paul Walker, while the second film was a partnership between Paul Walker and Tyrese Gibbs, a black buddy.

There are very good reasons why this happens.

Universal thought that Fantou’s salary was too high… so they kicked out one of the leading actors in a successful film.

The audience may think this behavior is stupid, but big companies have their own problems.

These big capitals attach great importance to return on investment.

When the returns are uncertain, cutting the budget is the most direct solution.

This is also known as the "accounting trap" in the operation of large companies.

Whether the project is good or not is a matter for the future. Anyway, my accounts are good today.

So the box office of the second part was not as good as the first one.

Global Times took a look and decided that this wasn’t going to work.

So a meeting was held to learn from the experience and make a decision.

Fire Paul Walker too!
They concluded that the failure of the second season was due to Paul's difficulty in carrying the banner.

Put all the blame on him and then drive him away.

In this way, the "trouble" is gone and a high amount of film remuneration is saved, solving the dilemma!

If you can't solve the problem, solve the person. This is the same principle for the whole world.

Universal Pictures has decided to "reboot" the project and will no longer use elderly people in the third film.

And because of the popularity of "Initial D", it has brought about a global drifting trend.

During that time, even racing games contained a lot of drifting elements.

Two consecutive games in the Need for Speed ​​series were set in underground cities brightly lit by neon lights at night, and both achieved pretty good sales results.

Drifting has almost become synonymous with unofficial racing.

Universal Studios was attracted by this subject matter and simply changed the location of the story from the Lighthouse Country to the Island Country.

Because the film is set in Asia, Universal specifically searched for a group of available Chinese directors.

Justin Lin was spotted by the company because of the good box office performance of his movie "Conquering the Wrath of the Sea".

He had only been in the industry for a short time at this point, and after studying for a while he decided to take over.

But it also contains some private goods.

In his early years, Director Lin's first feature film was called "Tomorrow Will Be Better", and the Taiwanese version was translated as "Hot Maji".

This film tells the story between top students and criminal groups.

One of the characters is called "Han".

The actor is Korean-born American actor, Sung Kang.

That’s right, it’s the Han and actor from the “Fast and Furious” series!
The character of Han was brought intact by Justin Lin from one of his old works to "Fast and Furious".

The actors and character settings are all exactly the same.

Designed to be the protagonist's mentor.

A large amount of island culture and island actors appear in "Fast and Furious 3".

Kitagawa Keiko, Tsumabuki Satoshi, Chiba Shinichi...

Another proof that "Fast and Furious 3" was deeply influenced by "Initial D" is this.

The drama also invited Keiichi Tsuchiya and Hideichi Shigeno to guest star.

Keiichi Tsuchiya is the prototype of Fujiwara Takumi, the drift king of the island nation.

And Shuichi Shigeno is the original author of the manga "Initial D".

When filming on the island country, local police did not allow the crew to speed on the highway.

The high-speed racing scenes are a tribute to another Japanese racing manga, "Wangan".

These two comics have a huge influence on the racing culture of the island country and even the world.

So Justin Lin came up with an idea.

Find someone to pretend to be the director and shoot the film yourself.

After the filming, he drove away in a racing car, leaving the fake director behind and being detained.

The next day, he went to rescue the people on behalf of the crew, paid the fine, and said nice things. He played the police of the island country as fools and succeeded.

The shooting was very serious.

Justin Lin is capable, but he went in the wrong direction.

In the third part, he strived for authenticity.

The vehicle damage and driving status are both realistic.

But it is only relatively realistic compared to the first two films, and there are still some exaggerated parts.

This is a major pain point of the third part. The result of being more realistic is that it doesn't look cool enough.

And those who came for the "Fast and Furious" brand were very disappointed, feeling that it was not that flavor at all.

Another point is that Universal also had a big problem with casting.

The male lead is neither as strong as Lao Fan nor as handsome as Paul.

The heroine also found a big-faced Latino...

This film has many fans overseas because of its drifting theme.

But the North American market is very bleak.

What's Lao Mei's style?

Turn, what turn?

Just break the straight line and it's done!
Drift racing is popular in the island country, but Americans prefer straight-line acceleration.

The most popular racing event there is racing on a 1/4 mile straight line on a rubber track.

People standing on the track couldn't walk because their shoes would fall off after every step.

Just stick it directly on the track, just stick it like that.

Because the torque of a car accelerating in a straight line is too great, without this little rubber, the tires will not be able to grip the ground when starting.

Are you going to show these rough guys how to drift?

He doesn't even watch the world's top technical competitions such as F1, Le Mans 24 Hours, and WRC, but only likes to watch the NASCAR "big crash" on oval tracks.

Just like European football is kicked with feet, in America, the word "soccer" refers to the rugby that bumps people back and forth.

They just like to play with violence; it's in the Yankees' DNA.

Therefore, the internal test screenings and North American advance screenings of "Fast & Furious 3" received very poor responses.

Especially the fact that it has nothing to do with the first two films made many loyal fans very angry.

You were still breastfeeding when your child died, and you knew to shake off the snot when it reached your mouth. Only now is Global Times getting angry.

Take off wisdom.

Vin Diesel was contacted and asked to make a cameo appearance, integrating the entire show into the series.

Only in the last few shots did the Family Man come to compete with the male lead of the third part.

Universal was quick-witted, but it also inadvertently left a way out for this series.

But Vin Diesel didn't come easy.

He is a famous drama queen in Hollywood.

it is good!
They thought I was too expensive and refused to let me act in the second film.

Now you come to me again, I'm going to extort money from you, right?
Although he is a drama queen, he has a good brain.

He didn't ask for any pay and just made the cameo appearance for free.

But the prerequisite is that Universal Pictures transfers to him the copyright of the next work in his famous series "Pitch Black".

So in addition to the box office share of "Pitch Black: Riddick", Vin Diesel also has a high income from the sales of discs and overseas copyrights, which comes from here.

It was also because of this guest appearance that Fan Bingbing discovered the possibility of returning to "Fast and Furious".

There are two main reasons why he was so angry and confronted the top management today.

First, after several discussions, Universal still rejected his sequel plan.

So what's his sequel plan?

Continuous shooting!

He wanted Universal to pay to make two films at once and release them separately, following a similar route to "The Lord of the Rings".

Bring back old characters and make each film related to each other, instead of being scattered like the previous films.

Turns out, he was right.

Vin Diesel: Universal is incompetent, it seems I have to leave!
He made this proposal in order to protect himself.

The old characters are back, and the films are still related, but that doesn’t mean he has a long-term meal ticket.

This brings us to the second reason.

He was aggressive, but in fact it was because he felt guilty.

This is a scare tactic often used by the Americans.

The more guilty you feel, the louder you speak.

It's like when you're having an argument with your girlfriend and then realize you're wrong.

Stop talking nonsense, I'm just going to shout a few times first to scare you.

Vin Diesel's situation is actually similar to that of the black guy in "Rush Hour".

After the success of "Fast & Furious" and "xXx", he became proud.

He started asking for sky-high salaries and film dividends.

Then, he filmed a series of works including "The Wonderful Father", "Find Me Guilty", and "The New Era of Life and Death".

Most people don’t know about these plays.

Because they all failed!
Only then did he understand.

This is asking people to rely on medicine in middle age, but he really can't do it.

So he is eager to return to his old works and make a comeback.

He made such a fuss because he wanted the company to listen to him and gain more benefits at the same time.

But the landlord has no surplus food!

Universal has no money either.

The budget for shooting both films is more than 1.5 million US dollars!
Because of the failure of the third film, the company was no longer optimistic about the series.

Global Times believes that it is in jeopardy and has no value.

As for why it is in danger, don't worry about it and don't ask.

It just froze.

"Fan." Mike, the head of Universal's film and television department, straightened his suit and said helplessly after he finished his output.

"Don't even mention shooting two films in a row."

“The company may not even be able to raise enough budget to make a movie right now.”

This guy is not talking nonsense.

Because Universal just made four blockbusters last year.

"The Incredible Hulk", "Hellboy 2", "Wanted" is the action movie where the bullets can turn, and "Death Race" with Jason Statham.

The company was emptied out.

As a result, the most expensive films, "The Incredible Hulk" and "Hellboy 2", both flopped...

"The Incredible Hulk" is the one that has Abomination and is connected to the Marvel Universe.

Coupled with the financial crisis, the situation has become even worse, and now the aisles of Universal Studios are clanging.

Don’t even think about asking me to pay more than 8500 million US dollars. I can’t even come up with the million budget for the previous film.

Vin Diesel scratched his hairless head.

What happened...

"If you want to do it, you have to make a big compromise in terms of pay."

Universal still uses the old routine of reducing costs and increasing efficiency by reducing employee wages first.

Lao Fan thought to himself, why did I come here? You just want me to reduce my pay.

Can I perform for you for nothing?

beep, beep...

Just when the two sides were in a stalemate, there was a knock on the glass door of the conference room.

“Mike…” A female assistant poked her head in and pointed to the phone in her hand.

"We are in a meeting. We will talk later."

"This call is related to this." The female assistant gestured in a low voice.

"Mr. Harvey called and said he had a friend who was interested in the Fast and Furious series."

"I want to talk to you."

"who?"

"It was said to be an Asian. Oh!" the female assistant remembered.

"He was the one who filmed the fight scene with Chen Long in the movie Rush Hour 3 a while ago."

"Rush Hour..." Mike waved his hand.

actor?

Still Asian.

Not very interested.

"Also, Mr. Harvey said that this friend can bring money into the group."

"Please come here quickly!" The Universal production director immediately jumped up from his chair.

Even Vin Diesel's eyes lit up... (End of this chapter)