Gear down again! A NEED FOR SPEED sequel is on the way!

Thanks to Vin Diesel and his friends currently ruling the world’s cinemas with their special brand of gonzo vehicular mayhem in Furious 7, it’s completely understandable that people are thinking about car movies (and probably also how they can get their cars to disobey the laws of gravity). So it probably shouldn’t come as the biggest surprise that Need For Speed is getting a sequel.

THR reports that Electronic Arts, publisher of the long-running series of racing video games on which the original movie was based, has teamed up with China Movie Channel, Jiaflix and 1905.com, to develop a sequel to the 2014 film which saw Aaron Paul starring as an ex-con who takes part in a dangerous cross country car race as part of his plot to get justice for his wrongful imprisonment. Honestly, you could probably have skipped most of that summary though and just read “dangerous cross country car race” because while Need For Speed was a fantastic car racing movie, it was a mediocre movie overall.

And that mediocrity continued to its domestic box office takings as it only pulled in $45 million on a $66 million budget in the US. Luckily, it did much better overseas, adding another $159 million to its coffers. And of that international take, China alone was responsible for $65 million of it, which probably goes a long way to explain the involvement of Beijing-based production company China Movie Channel here.

There’s no word yet on whether Paul or any of the rest of the movie’s cast like Imogen Poots, Kid Cudi, Dakota Johnson and Michael Keaton are returning, but the production companies state that “the creative team for the film will be announced in coming weeks, with production anticipated to begin later this year”.

With the type of lengthy pre- and post-production needed for a movie like this, that would imply a late 2016, perhaps early 2017 release date which may just put it in contention with the next Fast & Furious flick. And with that franchise currently destroying box office records faster than a set of retreads at a weekend drag racing event, it may not seem like such a good idea for Need For Speed to take on such a turbo-boosted beast.

However, if the studios are clever, they can position Need For Speed as being more about the “vroom vroom” than the “boom boom”. Basically make a movie for petrolheads who walked out of Furious 7 this weekend past and thought “Y’know that opening bit of the movie, where Michelle Rodriguez is drag racing another car at some racing event in the desert? I wish they got rid of all that unparallelled crazy inventive action, all the gobsmacking fights and all the touching Paul Walker stuff that came afterwards and just made the whole movie about those first few minutes!”. Now I personally don’t know of a single person who actually feels this way, but the law of averages dictates that they must be out there somewhere, right?

Last Updated: April 9, 2015