Who directed The Fate of the Furious?

Who directed The Fate of the Furious? We tell you who helmed the latest Fast & Furious movie, and it’s somebody that fans will likely be interested in.

The Fast & Furious movie franchise got a new director with The Fate of the Furious, so who’s behind the camera for the eighth installment that opens Friday? And why should his name be familiar to fans?

F. Gary Gray directed The Fate of the Furious, and he happens to have connections to more than one of the film’s stars. Gray directed Vin Diesel, who portrays Dominic Toretto, in the 2003 action flick A Man Apart. That movie starred Diesel as a DEA agent who set out to avenge the murder of his wife.

Later that same year Gray also helmed the remake of The Italian Job, which starred among others Charlize Theron and Jason Statham. Theron stars in The Fate of the Furious as villain Cipher, who forcibly enlists the services of Toretto, while Statham reprises his role as Deckard Shaw.

And in 2005, F. Gary Gray’s next movie was the Elmore Leonard adaptation Be Cool. One of the actors in that film? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who’s now become a staple of the Fast & Furious franchise as Luke Hobbs.

We don’t know if any of those connections helped Gray in being selected as the director of The Fate of the Furious, but having that familiarity with the actors certainly had to have been a plus in making the movie.

But chances are you know F. Gary Gray best for being the director of Straight Outta Compton, which was one of the most acclaimed films of 2015. That probably helped put him on the radar as well, since that movie was also distributed by Universal, which is also the studio behind the Fast & Furious franchise.

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However you slice it he’s a familiar name to everyone involved — and now Fast & Furious fans will learn who F. Gary Gray is when The Fate of the Furious premieres this week.