The FAST & FURIOUS franchise may have been perfectly fine without Dwayne the Rock Johnson, but his presence in FAST FIVE certainly seemed to have been the extra shot of adrenaline the franchise needed to reach new heights. The ridiculousness of the Rock’s character, Hobbs, only got more ridiculous as time went on, and by FURIOUS 7, he was wielding a massive gatling gun mere weeks after having been involved in a near-fatal incident.

The one unfortunate thing with FURIOUS 7, however, was how little screen time Hobbs ultimately had. Due to the scheduling conflicts, they had to make do with the few weeks he had. But can we expect the character to grow more and more marginal as time goes on? It doesn’t look like it.

According to an interview with Comicbook.com, FURIOUS 7’s consulting producer Hiram Garcia (who will also be involved in FURIOUS 8 to some capacity) revealed that we can expect more Hobbs in this film. 

“On the last movie, due to schedule restraints, we were only able to play on it for a couple weeks. In this one, we’re really spread throughout the movie, so it’s great to be back up here and we’ll be back on set on Wednesday.”

Garcia went to talk about all the fun they’ve had in creating and writing for the character.

“I’ve been in the mix with Chris Morgan, the writer, really dialing in the Hobbs character, which is one of our all-time favorite characters. Hobbs was one of the first characters we merged together on and when Fast approached [Dwayne Johnson], telling him about the character they wanted to create, [Dwayne Johnson] and I were able to sit down and craft this guy that we would just laugh out loud at the lines we would come up with. When you can say you’re gonna put a hurt on someone so bad you’ll make their mama wish they kept their legs closed, stuff like that where we can’t even finish the line before laughing – that’s the fun we love.”

We can’t forget about the long-rumored Hobbs spinoff, either. That’s something that’s been thrown around websites for some time now. But, of course, with a spinoff, the filmmakers need to decide if the character they’re working with has the capacity to be interesting enough in a standalone flick. Does Hobbs have what it takes to be a standalone character?

“A hundred percent. I think there’s always been conversations for that. The scheduling of it all is a challenge but there are always talks about a potential spinoff movie and what we can do with it. DJ and I were just talking about that the other day – our visions for it. There’s a real goal for that and we can have enough fun with that where we’ve earned that now with the audience. He’s a beloved enough character that they’d love to see what a ride with him would be like in his world. We have tons of history that we’ve crafted for this guy that we continue to sprinkle in throughout the movies. You’ll see a little bit more in this movie but ultimately we want to take that ride and spin him off and have some fun with it.”

Would you be on board for a Hobbs spinoff? Let us know in the comments down below!

FURIOUS 8 hits theaters on April 14, 2017.

Don’t forget to share this post on your Facebook wall and with your Twitter followers! Just hit the buttons on the top of this page.

SOURCE: ComicBook.com