NBC Universal Chief Donna Langley Apologizes for Sending ‘Fast & Furious’ Into Space: ‘We Can Never Get That Genie Back’

Even Donna Langley admits that the “Fast and Furious” crew never should have ventured into zero gravity.

“I’m sorry that we sent them into space,” Langley said of the decision to include a widely panned scene involving a rocket car and the International Space Station in 2021’s “F9.”

“We can never get that genie back,” she added.

Langley offered her mea culpa at the Toronto Film Festival as part of a discussion with Cameron Bailey, the festival’s director. However, Langley, who has plays a key role in guiding the franchise as NBCUniversal Studio Group and Chief Content Officer, said part of the success of the long-running series has been its adaptability. She noted that between 2006’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” and 2009’s “Fast & Furious,” the films decided to shake up their creative direction and make them less about racing culture.

“We knew that we had to figure out how to grow it,” Langley said. “We made a conscious decision to pivot to a sort of a globe-trotting heist scenario.”

Langley credited Vin Diesel with having a deep understanding of the core “Fast and Furious” audience, which came from his embrace of social media.

“Vin was an early adopter of talking to his fans directly,” Langley says. “As we saw that growing, and we saw where the conversation was going. We’ve always been very fan first on the ‘Fast’ franchise.”

In some cases, that’s led the “Fast & Furious” team to rethink major character deaths, including the fate of Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty Ortiz.

“ sort of throw out little things about, ‘Oh God, don’t kill Letty,'” Langley said. “OK, we’ll bring her back. ‘She never died. Don’t worry. Nothing to see here.’ But that’s all led by fan engagement.”

The “Fast & Furious” series has been praised for its inclusive approach to casting. That’s something that Langley says came naturally.

“It’s organically inclusive… it was never a conversation,” Langley said. “It has its roots in downtown L.A. and in car culture, which is a domain largely of people of color, of the Hispanic community. It honors and celebrates it in a really beautiful way.”