The Hollywood Reporter - 31.07.2019

The Business

Creative Space

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 38 JULY 31, 2019

Photographed by Damon Casarez

GROOMING BY ALEXA HERNANDEZ AT FORWARD ARTISTS

Chris Morgan

The Fast & Furious writer-producer on the

feud between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson,

the ‘difficult’ WGA standoff and why

‘you can never get too big’ with stunts

By Borys Kit

C

hris Morgan is a rarity in

the studio mega-franchise

world: a hired gun turned

key architect. The 48-year-old

writer has penned every Fast &

Furious movie made since the

third installment, 2006’s The

Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,

along the way becoming a full-

fledged producer on Universal’s

prized asset, one that has gener-

ated more than $5.1 billion at

the global box office. Morgan,

whose mother is a novelist — she

would write during her lunch

hour while running a home day

care — followed in her footsteps

by initially writing scripts while

working at a video store in his

L.A. suburb hometown of La

Cañada. Now he is spearheading

the franchise’s expansion into

spinoffs, working with Dwayne

Johnson and Jason Statham to

launch Fast & Furious Presents:

Hobbs & Shaw, which opens Aug. 2

and cost upward of $190 million.

He isn’t slowing his Fast output,

either, with a female-led spinoff

also in the works. Morgan, who

is married with two teenage

daughters, writes in coffee shops

in the morning, then heads to his

Universal-based bungalow in the

afternoon to oversee a growing

slate that also includes TV (he has

a deal at Sony Television) and a

sequel to Netflix’s Bird Box, which

he produced for the streamer. He

sat down with THR to chat about

the unique challenges of writing

a Fast & Furious movie, his hopes

for talks between screenwriters

and agents and why outer space is

not the limit for the franchise.

What is the writing process on a

Fast & Furious movie?

I start with my thought process.

What is the hurdle the charac-

ter has to grow and overcome?

That’s the starting point. That’s

the journey of the film, and then

we dress it up with crazy stunts.

Normally when I come up with

the idea of what the journey is

for the characters, I’m already

starting to think about how it

might be kind of cool to, you

know, yank a vault out on the

streets of Rio de Janeiro or cars

going across ice and suddenly

a submarine comes up behind

them. That stuff is always kind of

percolating in the background. So

I feel that normally you figure out

what that challenge is, and you

souls. We try to keep that as a

motif, kind of like a horse reflects

a cowboy or a sword reflects the

spirit of a samurai.

How hard is it to say no to Vin

Diesel or Dwayne Johnson when

they have an idea that you don’t

think will work?

I don’t think it’s that hard. My

Keanu Reeves

left this rock behind

when he was in

Morgan’s office to

discuss possibly

joining a project in

development.

match it to whatever the craziest

solution to accomplish that goal

is. That’s the formula.

But it’s still very much

vehicle-oriented.

It is. That’s at the heart of the

franchise. I love the relationship

between those characters — I love

that their cars represent their

Morgan’s

collection of novels

by his mother

serves as a reminder

to “sit and focus

on writing.”