Universal exec regrets sending Ludacris and Tyrese to space in Fast And Furious 9

Universal executive Donna Langley apologized for a scene in F9: The Fast Saga in which Ludacris and Tyrese travel to the ISS in a rocket car.

By Matt Schimkowitz | September 7, 2025 | 7:46pm

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

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Universal exec regrets sending Ludacris and Tyrese to space in Fast And Furious 9

Lamenting the decision to allow fans to chart the course of the Fast And Furious movies, NBC Universal Chief Content Officer Donna Langley apologized for a scene in 2021’s F9: The Fast Saga in which Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris’ characters, Roman and Tej, don SCUBA suits and fly to the International Space Station in a rocket car. “I’m sorry that we sent them to space,” Langley said at the Toronto International Film Festival. “We can never get that genie back.” Though she did not offer an early apology for Vin Diesel’s recent announcement that Brian O’Connor, the character played by the late Paul Walker, would appear in the next film, Langley admitted that most of the series’ ideas come from fans. Citing Diesel as an “early adopter of talking to his fans directly,” Langley said that plot points, including the deaths of major characters like Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty, were “led by fan engagement.”

“[People would] sort of throw out little things about, ‘Oh God, don’t kill Letty,'” Langley said. “OK, we’ll bring her back. ‘She never died. Don’t worry. Nothing to see here.’ But that’s all led by fan engagement.”

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Langley, who didn’t apologize for the scene in F9 where Roman (Tyrese Gibson) realizes he and the rest of the family are immortal and possibly fictional characters inside a fake universe, says that the expansive silliness of the series was born out of a desire to help the franchise grow. “We made a conscious decision to pivot to a sort of a globe-trotting heist scenario,” she said. That doesn’t quite explain how a globe-trotting heist scenario became a globe-orbiting one, nor was the initial apology necessary, as that scene in F9 is fun and funny. We’ll accept the apology anyway and hope that getting this major regret off her chest helps Langley produce the ever-elusive Fast X: Part 2, which has yet to materialize.

[via Variety]