Before making one of the most commercially successful but critically condemned films of all time, filmmaker David Ayer was also responsible for helming one of the biggest franchises of Hollywood – Dwayne Johnson’s Fast & Furious. He served as one of the writers of the screenplay alongside Gary Scott Thompson and Erik Bergquist.

David Ayer

However, despite his contributions to setting the pace for Fast & Furious, David Ayer believes that he has nothing to show for his work. He feels left out of the picture and blames it on him being an outsider who never really attended the get-togethers with the rest of the team.

David Ayer is an Outsider in Dwayne Johnson’s Franchise

Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson in the Fast & Furious franchise

The Fast & Furious franchise has been around for a long time. In fact, it might even be older than a lot of people reading this article right now. Starring high-profile celebrities like Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Gal Gadot, and so on, the franchise has accumulated $7.3 billion over the years. And while David Ayer is the man greatly responsible for how it all turned out, he feels truly underappreciated for his work.

During his appearance on the Real Ones with Jon Bernthal podcast, the filmmaker put the Fast & Furious franchise on absolute blast. Blaming it on how things work in the business, Ayer stated that he was part of the biggest Hollywood franchise yet has nothing to show for it.
“Biggest franchise in Hollywood, and I don’t have any of it. I got nothing to show for it, nothing, because of the way the business works.”
He then added that since he was an outsider and wouldn’t go out to party with the group, the narrative was completely hijacked.

“The narrative is I didn’t do s*it, right? It’s like people hijack narratives, control narratives, create narratives to empower themselves, right? And because I was always an outsider and because, like, I don’t go to the fu*king parties. I don’t go to the meals, I don’t do any of that stuff. The people that did were able to control and manage narratives because they’re socialized in that part of the problem. I was never socialized in that part of the problem so I was always like the dark, creative dude, beware.”

We can understand why this affects Ayer on this level. We would be too if no one remembered our contributions in making one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises become what it became.

David Ayer Turned Things Around for Fast & Furious

A still from The Fast and the Furious (2001)

The first installment of the franchise, The Fast and the Furious, was released all the way back in 2001 and would have looked completely different if it wasn’t for Ayer. The story was first developed by Gary Scott Thompson and Erik Bergquist and was set in New York with all Italian characters. When Ayer was brought in to rework the script, he incorporated people of color, Los Angeles, and street racing into the film.

“When I got that script, that sh*t was set in New York, it was all Italian kids, right? I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m not gonna take it unless I can set it in L.A. and make it look like the people I know in L.A., right?’ So then I started, like, writing in people of color, and writing in the street stuff, and writing in the culture, and no one knew sh*t about street racing at the time.”

He added,

“I went to a shop in the Valley and met with like the first guys that were doing the hacking of the fuel curves for the injectors and stuff like that, and they had just figured it out and they were showing it, and I’m like, ‘Oh f*ck yeah, I’m gonna put that in the movie.”
Clearly, the franchise would not have been what it is today and there was a chance it would not have been as successful as it is now. While Ayer proved to be the saving grace of the franchise, he certainly does not feel appreciated enough.

You can stream The Fast and the Furious on Netflix.