CINEMA: The Rock refuses Vin Diesel’s invitation to come back in Fast & Furious 10

The Fast & Furi­ous movie series is just going to have to end with­out bring­ing back The Rock. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Dwayne “The Rock” John­son made his fran­chise debut with his role as Luke Hobbs in Fast Five in 2011. repris­ing the role in the sixth, sev­enth and eighth films. The char­ac­ter has since branched out to direct his own spin-off with The Rock along­side Jason Statham in Hobbs & Shaw.

John­son did not appear in F9, and that was large­ly due to fric­tion between the actor and Vin Diesel on the sets of Fast & Furi­ous. Ulti­mate­ly, The Rock decid­ed he did­n’t want to face it any­more and pub­licly announced that he would not be return­ing for the final two Fast movies. Diesel then post­ed a mes­sage on Insta­gram beg­ging John­son to return to F10 and F11. Now, in a new inter­view with CNN, The Rock has reit­er­at­ed that there is “no way” he will return, and the Insta­gram post has only made mat­ters worse.

“I told [Diesel] direct­ly that I would not be return­ing to the fran­chise. I was firm but cor­dial with my words and said that I would always sup­port the cast and always sup­port the suc­cess of the fran­chise, but that there was no way I would return. Vin’s recent pub­lic post was an exam­ple of his manip­u­la­tion. I did­n’t like him rais­ing his chil­dren in the post, as well as the death of Paul Walk­er. Leave them out. We talked about it months ago and we clear­ly got along. ”

The Rock also sug­gests his issues were only with Diesel, and he lends his sup­port to the rest of the cast and crew involved in the Fast & Furi­ous fran­chise. He hints that he would have pre­ferred all of these issues with Diesel to have been kept qui­et, but regard­less, he says he’s look­ing for what will be the last install­ment of the main series to per­form well anyway.

“My goal from the start was to end my incred­i­ble jour­ney with this incred­i­ble frank­ness with grat­i­tude and grace. It is regret­table that this pub­lic dia­logue has mud­died the waters. Either way, I have con­fi­dence in the Fast uni­verse and its abil­i­ty to con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er to the pub­lic… I tru­ly wish my for­mer co-stars and crew the best of luck and suc­cess in the next one chapter.

The plan announced for F10 was for the penul­ti­mate film in the series to begin film­ing in Jan­u­ary. Vin Diesel also sug­gest­ed that the film would run back-to-back with F11. If Dwayne John­son were to return it was bound to hap­pen soon, but it looks like those hopes are lost.

“The world is wait­ing for the Fast 10 finale,” Diesel wrote in his orig­i­nal Insta­gram post. “As you know my kids call you Uncle Dwayne in my house. There isn’t a hol­i­day that goes by with­out them and you send­ing good wish­es… but the time has come. The lega­cy awaits you. I told you years ago that I was going to keep my promise to Pablo. I swore we would reach and show the best Fast in the final which is 10!

Fast & Furi­ous 10 is set to hit the­aters on May 19, 2023.