Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage(LOS ANGELES) — The Fast and the Furious celebrates its 20th anniversary this summer and Vin Diesel kicked off the celebration a little early.
Over the weekend, the 53-year-old action star honored the first installment of the wildly successful franchise by sharing a throwback snap of him and co-star Michelle Rodriguez, who played his character’s on-screen love interest, Letty Ortiz.
Diesel, who plays protagonist Dom Toretto, simply captioned the throwback, “20 year anniversary…Happy Creative… All love.”
The Fast and the Furious debuted in theaters on June 22, 2001 and earned a whopping $207.3 million during its box office run.
The movie, which also starred the late Paul Walker, went onto spawn a massive media franchise consisting of nine previously filmed movie continuations, two future feature-length continuations and three spinoffs — such as Hobbes & Shaw.
As the franchise grew, it added more star power to its family, such as Dwayne Johnson, Ludacris, Charlize Theron, Tyrese Gibson, John Cena, Nathalie Emmanuel and many others.
F9, as the latest ninth installment is called, is due to premiere in theaters on May 28, 2021.
The last Furious film to hit theaters was 2017’s The Fate of the Furious, which racked up a jaw-dropping $1.236 billion during its run in the box office. The movie, which is the eleventh highest-grossing movie of all time, held the title the highest-grossing worldwide opening before Avengers: Infinity War was released in 2018.
By Megan Stone
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