Fast 8 Finds Its Villain—And She’s a Familiar Face to Car Nuts

Charlize Theron joins the cast.
www.thedrive.com

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Charlize Theron has been cast as the villain in Fast 8, the ridiculously-named eighth installment of the incredibly successful Fast & Furious franchise. She’ll be joining returning stars Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, and all those other actors who’ve seen their names get bumped further and further down in the credits as the franchise slowly transforms into Ocean’s Eleven with car chases.

Hollywood trade publication Deadline broke the news early this morning on their website. A few hours later, the official Facebook page for the Fast & Furious franchise confirmed it, posting the following:

Theron, of course, stole the show in last year’s Mad Max: Fury Road as Furiosa, the one-armed warrior woman who was way more of a leading character than Tom Hardy’s titular Max Rockatansky. She earned her initial batch of automotive screen cred when she starred alongside Mark Wahlberg and Edward Norton in the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, which was also directed by Fast 8 helmsman F. Gary Gray.

Fast 8 will hit screens on April 14, 2017. It will then be followed by Fast & Furious 9 on April 19, 2019, and by Fast & Furious 10 on April 2, 2021. At which point, presumably, the franchise will be rebooted with younger actors, because by that point Vin Diesel will be 53 years old.