Vin Diesel Finally Has a Start Date for ‘Fast Forever’ — And a Confession to Go With It

For 25 years, the roar of engines and the mantra of “family” have defined one of Hollywood’s most enduring franchises. This past week, that milestone anniversary took center stage as fans and cast members gathered to celebrate the film that started it all back in 2001.

The occasion doubled as more than a nostalgia trip. With ‘Fast Forever‘ looming as the announced finale to the mainline saga, all eyes were on star and producer Vin Diesel to see whether he’d finally offer concrete details about the long-delayed follow-up to ‘Fast X’.

He did not disappoint. Diesel revealed that cameras are set to roll on ‘Fast Forever’ in December, marking the clearest production timeline the franchise has had in years.

“We start shooting in December, if I can make good on the request from the studio,” Diesel told Variety Monday night at the 25th anniversary screening of ‘The Fast and the Furious’.

The comment landed alongside a far more personal admission about just how difficult it’s been to land on a script worthy of closing out the saga. “I’m in a good place, though. I had to go through four sets of writers, four years of development, to get to something that I felt would be worthy of a finale,” he said, before revealing that reading the finished script a couple of weeks earlier had brought him to tears.

That emotional weight isn’t new territory for Diesel, who has spent much of 2026 teasing just how personal this ending feels to him. Inside the anniversary screening, he went further, telling the crowd directly about the moment the ‘Fast Forever’ pages got to him.

“I’m going to tell you something personal,” he said, describing how one tear fell halfway through his first read of the script, before the emotion built by the final page. It’s a level of candor that has become something of a signature for Diesel as he approaches the end of Dominic Toretto’s story, and one that continues to fuel speculation about how emotionally charged the finale will be for longtime viewers.

The road to this point has been anything but smooth. ‘Fast Forever’ has weathered multiple writer changes, pandemic-era delays, and shifting release windows since ‘Fast X’ left audiences on a cliffhanger in 2023. A December shoot, if it holds, would put the eleventh and reportedly final mainline film on track for its already announced March 17, 2028 theatrical release.

Diesel’s comments arrive as the franchise leans hard into its legacy moment, with the original 2001 film back in theaters for its 25th anniversary run this month. Across two and a half decades and ten mainline entries, the ‘Fast & Furious’ series has grown into Universal’s most profitable franchise, and the pressure to stick the landing on its closing chapter hasn’t been lost on fans, many of whom have watched the finale’s development stretch out for years with a mix of patience and skepticism.

Whether December brings the actual start of filming or another round of delays remains to be seen, given how many false starts this production has already had. For now, Diesel’s message is one of cautious optimism: after four years and four sets of writers, he believes ‘Fast Forever’ has finally found the ending this saga deserves.

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