December 23rd, 2019 
Jackson Murphy 
The “Fast and the Furious” franchise is getting animated with DreamWorks’ new series Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, premiering Dec. 26th on Netflix. Executive Producers Tim Hedrick and Bret Haaland share insights on their family-friendly entry in this saga – and working with Vin Diesel.
Jackson Murphy: Were you fans of the “Fast & Furious” saga before you got involved in this animated project?
Tim Hedrick: Yes. The Fast and the Furious is kind of like an institution now. I feel like the whole world has been with this franchise. I enjoyed the first one with a lot of the street racing but I really started getting into it like “5, 6 and 7” when they started traveling the world and blowing more stuff up and becoming super spies. I love that part, honestly.
Bret Haaland: Me too. They’ve got a very exciting group right now where the sky’s the limit. They can do just about anything.
JM: This series puts the spy/secret agent element front and center. It has been touched on in some of the previous movies, including a little bit in this summer’s “Hobbs & Shaw”.
TH: When we started to think about how we wanted to create a new kind of playground in the “Fast & Furious” universe, we really wanted to start at the base level with the original idea of these kids out running around in the streets and over the course of the first season – take it out to where it is now with Hobbs & Shaw battling cyborgs and Dom jumping over cars from one high-rise in Dubai to another. And we get to that level pretty quickly over the first season.
It was really exciting to be able to, in the animated world, explore all the tech we could ever think of – create new things that the cars could do that they can’t do in the films. The films are awesome because they’re so rooted in practical car stunts, and I think that’s… part of the movies that I love a lot. Since we are animated, we can just go straight to 11 on every single thing. We can have hatches pop open and guns shoot out of the cars and shoot paintballs at each other – and just get crazy.
JM: The “Fast” movies are all rated PG-13 for some violence, adult language and sexual content. Because this show is for families, was approaching it… almost like a clean slate or a re-vamp?
BH: I suppose it would be a little bit of a re-vamp where we would basically start with “Fast & Furious” and make it as intense as we possibly could internally – and then we would start to dial back and make it more kid friendly. The terms grit and fun were often used to create our parameters. The intensity and reality of the movies is hard core. And then we find the fun and the lightness that kids could all enjoy. That way we don’t lose any of the intensity but we maintain the safety and the good times.
JM: And you get the fun and the youthful energy, especially from Tony Toretto, who is Dom’s cousin.
TH: Developing that character has been a lot of fun. In the beginning, we knew that we wanted to kind of take a step back from where Dom is because Dom is so incredibly cool and capable in every situation and can never be beat – and is always teaching others. He’s the leader of the family. We wanted Tony to have that charisma where people are drawn to him and he’s the core of his little family, but he’s got eons to go to become where Dom is in the cool factor. I really wanted to have a character that’s constantly learning and trying to keep up and trying to live up to the Toretto family name and kind of not getting it. I think that’s a much more interesting character to deal with.
And then once we cast Tyler Posey, he brought this real heart and fun, and he makes really funny noises when [Tony] gets hit on the head. He really flushed it out. So those two things together I think make Tony a really interesting character to watch.
JM: I broke the news online… that Vin Diesel voices a CG animated version of Dom on “Spy Racers”. How did you get Diesel to reprise his role?
BH: He’s [also] an executive producer of the series, so he’s been heavily involved from the beginning. He was interested. He came in. Tim recorded him. He was wonderful to work with. There really wasn’t much convincing that we had to do. He was on board from the beginning. We put a top animator here on his scenes to really, really work on the nuances. We went over his CG model again and again and again to try to get that powerful beefy body that he’s got with all the muscles and the strength. We were constantly refining that to try to get the look right. We have a slightly realistic view of our characters, and then we pull it back just a little to give it that animated look. We feel we did a decent job with capturing him.
JM: I think you did. Did Vin like it once he saw the finished version of Dom? Did he approve it?
TH: He did. He loved it. We were just talking about it at the premiere last weekend. He was very happy. He loved the way the show came out. I don’t think the show would be going forward if Vin Diesel wasn’t happy with the results. He’s the godfather of the franchise, so without his say-so, I don’t think anything really happens.
JM: And it’s great because he does appear on the first episode of “Spy Racers”. I like the fact that he still provides the wisdom and the guidance of the series. It must’ve been really important to him and to you guys to make sure that his character stayed that way from the movies going into this show.
TH: And it’s not just in the show. I talked with him before we started production and kind of pitched him the idea. He talked at length about what the franchise means to him. It’s kind of a cliche – they talk about family in the “Fast” franchise – but it’s true. He really thinks of it that way. It’s really important to him that all the notes are just right to make this a part of the “Fast” franchise. In fact, he had some ideas that we incorporated in the show, including the character of Frostee – because he thought it would be important to have a younger character who can’t drive on the scene, and kind of looks up to Tony the way Tony looks up to Dom. It’s a great idea, and Frostee’s an incredible character.
JM: And Vin Diesel’s daughter Similce is on the series as well. How was it working with her?
TH: She’s great. She plays Sissy, Frostee’s little sister. She’s had a lot of fun. I think this is the first acting gig she’s ever had. She’s really enjoying it. And it’s really fun to see when Vin came in to record his lines, Similce came in with him and kind of gave him some directions, which was hilarious. They’re a lot of fun together. And that makes it fun for him to pass the torch to her.
JM: One of the big elements of the movies and this show is the look of the cars. How did you capture them?
BH: We started with the movies. We’re looking at the car that Dom drives, the Dodge. We tried to modify that just enough, and then we blended that with other muscle cars – and we created our own, completely legally safe version of a muscle car for Tony. And we went to Layla [another character] and made a Coupe that’s a little bit of a Euro car [and] a little bit of a Japanese tuner car. They blended together to make this really awesome Coupe (again, totally legal). So we’re looking at vehicles that feel real world and are grounded in reality, and then we sort of tweak them proportionately.
JM: And what about the sounds of the cars?
BH: We’re very proud of the sound team we have. They’ve won plenty of Emmys for the work they’ve done. And they investigated in detail all the types of sounds a muscle car would make, a big truck, how the wheels of a truck would sound differently when it takes a corner or hits the brakes – the specific sounds of an electric car that Echo drives. We investigated all the aspects of it, so we’re constantly watching that and tracking that.
JM: Over the summer I met Neal Mortiz, one of the producers of the movies who’s also a producer on “Spy Racers”. What was he looking for in a project like this?
TH: I think that he really has a good feel for what makes the “Fast” films look like the “Fast” films. One of the details he threw at us when we were looking at some early animatics was that we needed to add more things into the foreground so we could actually feel the speed of the cars. I think as a guy who’s been a producer on all these “Fast” films, he’s really picked up a lot of those inside tips – to ground us even more. He’s pretty rooted into that stuff.
JM: That’s good. So “Fast & Furious 9” opens in May. The marketing campaign has begun. Did you insert any references into “Spy Racers” that could carry over into “Fast 9”?
TH: We tried to stay away from any kind of crossover with any of the movies. We’re in the world of “Fast”, but because the way our production works and the way their production works and the way things change before they reach the marketplace, we just tried to stay out of any story details that would possibly cross over in case they changed something or we changed something.
JM: You know what’s really interesting is that all the movies have come out in the late spring and summertime. I love the fact that this is kind of a holiday treat – for families to watch this together on Netflix over the holidays.
TH: Yeah. When you’re done opening your presents and you’re kind of tired of listening to your in-laws talk for a while, you can binge some “Spy Racers”. It’s a great way to burn 3 hours. You can enjoy it – but it also just kills time. Let’s face it, the holidays are long!
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