The Rock’s return is officially confirmed

Last month, Vin Diesel took the stage at CinemaCon to announce that he and the folks at Universal Pictures are currently developing Fast & Furious 8 to be released in April 2017. Unfortunately, he didn’t add any details about who else would be returning for another ride.

Yesterday, Warner Brothers hosted a press conference for San Andreas, the film where Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will play a heroic first responder making amends with his family.

Johnson didn’t have any extra details to divulge, but when asked about the sequel, he didn’t hesitate to confirm his eventual return (via Collider): “Of course. It can’t go on without Hobbs.”

Considering Johnson injected new life into the action franchise, it’s difficult to disagree with him. Every sequel since he joined the series in Fast Five has continued to get bigger and arguably better. In addition, since Paul Walker will no longer be part of the franchise, Johnson’s presence is more important than ever.

However, fans are surely hoping that Johnson has much bigger role in Fast & Furious 8 than he had in Furious 7 last month. Even though he had one big fight in the beginning, followed by his own “save the day” sequence in the action-packed climax, Johnson was gone for pretty much the entire second act. Thankfully everything that happened without him was insane and awesome enough without him. But there’s also a chance we might get to see his character Hobbs in action without the rest of the Fast & Furious crew.

At this stage, we now know that both Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson will be coming back for more action in Furious 8 – but who else will be joining the party? Surely Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, and Tyrese Gibson will be back, but what about Jordana Brewster – who presumably will just stay with Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner forever in paradise? Could Kurt Russell or Nathalie Emmanuel make their way into the mix? Even beyond returning stars, let’s not forget that this is a franchise that has been going bigger and bigger ensemble-wise for years now. Basically, expect a lot more news to come out of this film in the coming months.

Fast & Furious 8 will be in theaters on April 14, 2017.