The listeners demanded it, the author agreed to it, and so the podcaster (oh-so-reluctantly) allowed it. For those who came in late, Barry Hertz popped by on “An Hour With…”, the semi-regular offshoot of The Box Office Podcast, to discuss his sprawling and comprehensive literary deep-dive into the Fast and the Furious franchise. The book Welcome to the Family has been available in print and audio since late last year and primarily focuses on the first ten core Fast and Furious movies. As such, Mr. Hertz generously agreed to return on a future episode to discuss Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.

As such, this shorter episode, at least initially, was going to discuss only the winding road that led to a Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham-led spin-off opening theatrically in August 2019. The David Leitch-directed action spectacular, also starring Idris Elba and Vanessa Kirby, earned decent notices, grossed more than a good-enough $760 million worldwide, but inspired little enthusiasm for either itself or the notion of a sequel. However, the film remains a late-2010s time capsule that captures the constant push-pull as Hollywood struggled to expand successful franchises into secondary directions without harming the proverbial mother ship.

Anyway, near the end of our conversation, we discussed the still-unknown fate of Fast & Furious 11. So, of course, three days later, Universal announced a March 17, 2028, release date for Fast Forever. As such, Mr. Hertz was nice enough to jump back on for a quick Friday afternoon mini-discourse, after exiting a (work-mandated) matinee showing of Melania, which I’ve cut-and-pasted into the end of the first episode as gracefully as possible.

Alas, he lacked the courage or journalistic fortitude to ask the handful of Melania viewers their thoughts about the 11th and presumably final chapter in the Fast & Furious saga. Jokes aside, you’ve got the 30-minute conversation about Hobbs & Shaw, an 11-minute chat about Fast Forever, and then the conventional “Who are you and what the hell do you want?” show ending plug grabbed from the end of the Tuesday chat and affixed onto the end of the Friday one.

Anyway, as far as “recommended reading,” I mean, obviously buy his book. But besides that, do read his Melania review so that his sacrifice need not be in vain. Plus, also read his terrific piece about how the straight-to-streaming structure has doomed a generation’s worth of movies, including many that in a prior time would have been considered big-deal theatrical releases, to essentially vanish into a black hole of cultural irrelevancy.

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