Break out the shiny cars, it appears the sixth and seventh The Fast & the Furious films are being scripted at the same time.

After Fast Five went on to be the highest grossing film in the franchise yet, it was no surprise that Fast Six was greenlit, and there was already talk of a seventh film to follow.  Now Vin Diesel has confirmed that the two films are being scripted at the same time.  Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, the action star said, “With the success of this last one, and the inclusion of so many characters, and the broadening of scope, when we were sitting down to figure out what would fit into the real estate of number six, we didn’t have enough space.” He went on to add, “We have to pay off this story, we have to service all of these character relationships, and when we started mapping all that out it just went beyond 110 pages. The studio said, ‘You can’t fit all that story in one damn movie!’”

I’m sorry, but did I miss something when this series of movies became so deep that they didn’t have “enough space” for all of their plotlines?  This has nothing to do with servicing a story, this has to do with the fact that the fifth film in a series became the highest grossing one yet and brought in over $626 million worldwide off of a $125 million dollar budget.  Working on the next two at the same time lowers costs even further, potentially putting each installment possibly in the $110 million range.

Paul Walker, one of the stars of the series, added, “It’s not about the action and the cars, which initially appealed to me when I was 25-years-old,  Because if that’s all it was, it would have fallen off a long time ago.”  I hate to break it to him, but it’s been 10 years since the first film, that’s exactly what it’s still about.  You’ve got a new generation of kids coming to see these movies for the cars, and somehow I doubt they’re showing up for the “plot.”

From the realm of “absolutely no surprise”, Universal Pictures has announced a release date for the sixth film in The Fast and the Furious series, confirming that the film is indeed on the horizon.

Universal Pictures announced this weekend that we can expect a sixth film in the car-centric series to speed into theaters on May 24th, 2013.  A fascinating move when you consider that there is no word if a script has even been started yet.  Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson are al expected to return for the next film in the series, which isn’t surprising on the former two’s parts since you really don’t see them get work in other films as of late.

While Fast Five is the highest grossing film in the series at $207.2 million, it is technically not a success by usual Hollywood accounting which calls for a film to gross double its production budget domestically.  With a budget of $125 million, the fifth film would have had to hit $250 million to be considered in the black, but an additional $385 million in foreign reciepts for a global total of $592.2 million is sure to have influenced this decision to press forward with another installment.

Director Justin Lin, who helmed Fast Five and took it in a new direction for the series, is expected to return for whatever the sixth one ends up being named.

The suspicion is that this film is being rushed due to the fact that The Dark Tower is going to miss its original release date of May 17th, 2013 due to numerous delays with that production.  Universal needed a “tentpole” movie for the summer, and this one could get spun up pretty quickly, so there you go.

While I personally have no interest in the content of these movies, I do find the business side of them interesting, and right now I’ll be waiting to see if they dial back the production budget at all for the next installment.

I’m not sure what amazes me more: The fact that a fifth installment in the Fast & the Furious even exists, or that Fast Five brought in $86,198,765 in its opening weekend.

Is this really where we are now movie wise?  A fifth movie in a brainless series about cars can bring in just north of $86 million in its opening weekend?  The good news it cost $125 million, so it’s nowhere near making its money back, but, still … $86 million.  Wow.

While I have never watched any part of this series, I’ve caught a minute or two here, and … I just don’t get it.  Near as I can tell it’s about pretty cars, and there’s some mumbling going on that has a remote resemblance to “acting.”  For whatever reason, people seem to like them, and apparently they were really hungry for another installment in the series.  This one weekend alone made this the fourth most successful of the films according to Box Office Mojo, and it looks to easily get into the third spot, surpassing the second film in the series.

There’s been a short discussion going on in the comments of my post for the Transformers Dark of the Moon trailer about how supporting films like this just make them make more.  Well, in this particular case it isn’t exactly correct because a sixth film was greenlit before this one even hit theaters, and there has been talk of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s character being spun off into his own film.  Yep, looks like it’s true, you go to crappy movies and they breed like rabbits as studios try to make more.

Is it really any wonder that the quality of films has continued to fall like a rock over he past decade or so?  There is no reason why there should have ever been more than one of these films let alone five of them with more to come.  Can’t we just end this insanity?  Stop complaining about movies like this if you keep going to the theaters to see them!

Please Note: No, I’m not seeing Dark of the Moon in the theater, I’ve cleared that up now, so I’m not part of the issue, thank you.