67% in favour so here goes - first look at Helen Mirren in #F8 #thefateofthefurious https://t.co/byQYhXMdt6 pic.twitter.com/K067osXwg5— Anton Volkov (@antovolk) April 6, 2017

Oscar-winner Helen Mirren joins the Fast & Furious franchise with her role in The Fate of the Furious, as a new TV spot for the film illustrates. The eighth film in the Fast & Furious series overall, The Fate of the Furious opens in theaters next week, and is already projected to rake in $110 million at the box office (or more) during its first weekend. Fans are obviously curious to see how the series will progress following the late Paul Walker’s final appearance in Furious 7, and the largely positive early Fate of the Furious reactions from the movie’s screening at CinemaCon are describing it as a “different,” but highly entertaining film.

Part of the difference comes from a surprise spin in the plot for The Fate of the Furious, with the team’s fearless leader Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) hooking up with “high-tech terrorist” Cipher (Charlize Theron) and turning against his family. For added complexity, former enemy Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) joins the team to help take down Dom in Fate of the Furious, despite serious reservations from Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).

As an added wrench in the works, Shaw’s mother will also be a part of the adventure, though up until now we didn’t know much about the character - other than she’s played by Dame Mirren herself. From a short Fate of the Furious TV spot that has been dropped online via Twitter, which you can watch above, we now see that Shaw’s mother is actually meeting up with Dom for “something very wicked.”

This is an extraordinary meeting, since like her son Deckard, she would hold Dom and his crew responsible for her other son, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), being in a coma. This connection could possibly explain Dom’s turn to the dark side. The clip also shows Mama Shaw with Deckard, so it seems there may be a lot of ambiguous and shifting alliances in The Fate of the Furious.

It will be interesting to see how big a role Mirren’s character has in all this, especially considering that the actress’ conversation with Diesel at a party led to him getting the completed Fate of the Furious script rewritten to include her, after it had already been greenlit. It certainly looks like she’ll play a pivotal part in the story, regardless of screentime, and could potentially continue on in the “new Fast & Furious trilogy” that Diesel has billed Fast & Furious films eight, nine and ten as being.

Source: Universal Pictures

  • Fast and Furious 8 Release Date: 2017-04-14