Universal hired a fake director to get arrested so they could keep filming Tokyo Drift

The folks behind the third Fast & Furious movie had a very interesting plan of action in place for this very specific occasion.

The makers of the Fast and Furious movies must really, really like Justin Lin. After they hired him to direct The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, they kept him to direct the next three outings in the franchise, and after he took a little break to make a Star Trek film, he's back again for the upcoming F9, as well as two more confirmed Fast & Furious movies after that. But it turns out their investment in Lin's future as a director was already pretty deep, just from their actions taken during the production of Tokyo Drift. On the second episode of TBR Spotlight: The Fast & Furious Saga, in which Eoghan, Garry and Rory tackle the third and fourth Fast & Furious movies, they discuss [LISTEN from 25.20 below] a brilliant bit of deception performed by Universal, the producers behind the series. As Lin discovered during the making of the movie, getting permission to film in certain parts of Japan is incredibly difficult, but the production decided to go ahead with the necessary permits. And what happened if the police got involved? Well, it turned out Universal had a contingency plan in place for just that occasion. Lin told Digital Spy at the time of the movie's release:

"When we went to shoot in Tokyo it's a very different culture. They don't give out film permits. We would be setting up a scene and people would just walk right through the set. I had this one guy, I thought he said he was me. I didn't know what that meant.

"I wanted to shoot in Shibuya, which is the most crowded place in Tokyo. The cops, they're all so polite, so it takes 10 minutes for them to come over and kick you out. They shut us down, I'd gotten all my shots, but I didn't know they were going to arrest me. Another guy stepped up and said, 'I'm the director.' I found out that it was his job to take the fall for me. He went to jail for the night and I'm forever grateful."

The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift and all of the other entries in The Fast Saga are all available to watch on NOW right now, while Fast & Furious 9 is currently scheduled to arrive Irish cinemas this June. Clip via The Fast Saga