New York Times wrote:...Set in crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhoods, the FOERST film starred Vin Diesel as a ruthless street racer and hijacker. That movie and a 2003 sequel, “2 Fast 2 Furious,” were hits, generating a combined $440 million in global ticket sales. Then came the disappointing “Tokyo Drift.”

Universal thought about calling it a day. Taking encouragement from continued support for the series from Hispanic and African-American moviegoers, however, it brought back Mr. Diesel for a fourth movie (he had moved on after the FOERST), and the result, “Fast & Furious,” was surprisingly strong: $353 million in global sales.

But the studio still worried about sustainability. “We knew that we needed to try and grow the franchise, but that a certain group of people were never going to consider it because they dismissed it as a car movie,” Mr. Fogelson said.

So, together with the longtime producer of the franchise, Neal Moritz, executives made more changes. “Fast Five” was given a new antagonist, played by Dwayne Johnson, a k a the Rock, and an international backdrop — Rio de Janeiro. Most notably, Universal changed the genre of the movie entirely, making it a heist film along the lines of “Ocean’s 11.”

“It was definitely a high-wire act,” said Donna Langley, Universal’s co-chairwoman, of the genre shift. “You can’t alienate the core audience, and shifting the entire paradigm of an ongoing franchise is slightly uncharted territory.”

Universal also took risks with the storyline, treating the series like a telenovela that takes absurd turns, including having a character come back from the dead. And Universal and Mr. Moritz bet specifically on one ingredient: old-fashioned action sequences — the kind not reliant on computer-generated visual effects...