Vin Diesel has never been a man of many words, which may have been part of the reason that Marvel Studios hired him to voice the linguistically-limited flora colossi Groot in the Guardians of the Galaxy films. A man of action, he’d much rather ski-jump down the side of a radio tower, trade blows in a desiccated warehouse with WWE superstar Dwayne Johnson, or battle nocturnal bioraptors on the arid planes of planet M6-117 during a total eclipse.
When he saw the first trailer for the latest installment of his high-octane street-racing-turned-spy-fi Fast Saga, for instance, Diesel “was just speechless,” and now that the four-minute promo for Fast & Furious 9 has accrued more than half-a-billion views, the actor once again finds himself at a loss for words:
In just its first 24 hours, the trailer set a record as the most watched trailer for a Universal Pictures film ever released with 151-million views, surpassing the 139-million views accrued by its predecessor, The Fate of the Furious, in 2016. The trailer is also, perhaps appropriately, the ninth-most viewed trailer of all time, behind seven Walt Disney Studios productions and the 2017 teaser trailer for the Warner Bros. adaptation of It.
Diesel later released a slightly wordier two-minute follow-up video on Instagram. Wearing a Reach Out Worldwide T-shirt to promote the disaster relief charity founded by his longtime Fast Saga co-star Paul Walker, Diesel took the time to thank his 61.3 million followers for driving Fast 9‘s trailer to such incredible numbers, as well as expressing his gratitude for the excitement surrounding the release of his superhero project Bloodshot.
He also provided brief updates on the sequel to his 2015 dark fantasy film The Last Witch Hunter as well as a fourth entry in the xXx series, which will shoot partially in China, before taking the opportunity to send a message of strength and solidarity to his “brothers and sisters in China” in light of the coronavirus outbreak. He then ended the video by assuring his viewers that he would share a Valentine’s Day song by Scottish singer-songwriter Louis Capaldi.
Fast & Furious 9 premieres on May 22nd, with the tenth installment of the Fast Saga set to debut on April 2nd, 2021. Meanwhile, Vin Diesel can be seen next in Sony Pictures’ Bloodshot, scheduled to debut on March 13th.
