Entertainment
Gal Gadot Officially Explains Why the Final ‘Fast & Furious’ Movie Is Taking So Long
Summary
- Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with Gal Gadot for Prime Video’s The Runner.
- Gadot discusses her extensive training, channeling Tom Cruise, and filming in London.
- She also teases her hopes for the Fast & Furious franchise and Doug Liman’s thriller, Bitcoin.
Recently, Collider spoke with Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot about Prime Video’s new action-packed thriller, The Runner, from director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland). In the movie, Gadot plays a high-powered London attorney, Maia, whose morning jog is cut short by a cryptic phone call informing her that her son has been abducted. This anonymous caller explains that Maia must race through London and carefully follow a series of instructions — and that her son’s life depends on her participation in this sick game.
In this interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, which you can watch above, Gadot discusses Macdonald’s “cerebral and methodical” filmmaking, the whirlwind shooting experience in London, how Tom Cruise inspired her, and why she’s more interested in starring in “The Foodie” than The Runner 2. Gadot also comments on the upcoming final installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, and what it was like on the set of Doug Liman’s (Edge of Tomorrow) Bitcoin, working opposite Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) and Pete Davidson (Saturday Night Live).
Gal Gadot Reveals What She Wants To See in the Final Fast & Furious Movie
Gadot plays Gisele Yashar in the franchise.
COLLIDER: The Fast & Furious franchise is about to end. It has a release date. I’m still not sure it’s getting made, but what do you hope happens in the final Fast & Furious movie?
GAL GADOT: Everybody come together and… I don’t know. I think part of the reason why it’s taking so long is to make sure that the script is being completely figured out in a perfect way, and I think it takes time. But I know there’s so many people involved who love this franchise — I’m one of them — and I hope we will finish on a very, very high, great note.
I do as well. And I do hope it comes back to LA full circle with the first film.
GADOT: That’s a great idea. You see. Why are you asking me? You have all the answers.
That’s what I would like.
Gal Gadot Channeled Tom Cruise for ‘The Runner’
The Mission: Impossible star kept her motivated throughout the shoot.
After making this movie, what is your current relationship with running? Is it love it, hate it, or never again?
GADOT: I have a love-hate relationship with running, but it’s better because before I simply hated running. So now it’s like, I love it, I know it’s good for me. It’s like eating broccoli: I know it’s good for me, it’s not my favorite, but after I choose to eat broccoli, I know I’ve made the right decision. It’s kind of the same thing. I didn’t fall in love with running, and that was my hope. But also, to be fair, it kind of abused the way we used the running. How can one expect to love running after I run an entire film all the time nonstop?
I think you did more running in this movie than Tom Cruise in all the Mission: Impossibles, because he’s always running. There’s the famous montage of him running. But in all seriousness, when you signed on for this, were you like, “Oh, I can do this,” and at what point in the shoot were you like, “What did I sign on for?”
GADOT: It’s funny you mentioned Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise was the one person I kept thinking about whenever it got really, really difficult. I was like, “You can do it. Tom Cruise does it. You can try and do it as well.”
I think it’s one of those things that you just take a big leap of faith and trust the process. None of us knew how exactly we were going to be able to film it and to capture everything. We weren’t able to lock down all of London. We had to have the camera guy on a skateboard or on rollerblades capturing everything, holding the camera at me, hardly being able to see.
It was like everything about making this film was challenging, and I like it. I like the idea of one overcoming a challenge, and also, as much as in my life I like certainty, I like to let the path reveal itself when you’re doing something creative like this. So, I just trusted the process, and I became as ready as I could. I trained for nine months, and that’s it. And we have a great movie.
There are a lot of shots where you are clearly running through real people in London. How many takes were actually ruined because people recognized who you are while you’re filming? Because they must see a camera. They see you.
GADOT: Not many, because they wouldn’t approach while we were shooting. People were very respectful. They had the double take and stuff, but they only approached me after we cut, which was great, because then not a lot of the shots were ruined.
But I can tell you a funny story. We were very limited when we were filming in the tube, and at one point I had to go, just me, my security guy, and the camera guy, to the tube to a different station, get on the thing, and just the both of us were filming it, and it was just me there. I had this, like, bloody cut on my forehead, and I was so worried that people would come, worried about me, and actually people didn’t mind it too much. I was telling the camera guy, “Wow, I thought people would be like, ‘Is everything okay? You have something. What’s going on?’” But that wasn’t the case. It was interesting. It was a social experiment that was very interesting to do.
If Kevin calls you tomorrow and says The Runner 2 takes place on a treadmill, are you taking his call or hanging up on it?
GADOT: So I told him that I think the sequence, if we had The Runner, the next one should be The Foodie. The one after it should be The Spa, or something like that, I think. I think the running kind of… It was a lot; let’s just put it this way.
Gal Gadot Teases Her New Doug Liman Thriller ‘Bitcoin’
She stars opposite Pete Davidson and Casey Affleck.
Before I run out of time with you, I’m a big fan of Doug Liman, and you did that movie with him called Bitcoin. What can you tell people about this film? Is it based on anything real, or is it a Hollywood take on it?
GADOT: I think it’s everything all together, and it’s crazy. We finished filming it a few months ago. It was a crazy experience. It was amazing to be able to work with Doug Liman and Pete Davidson and Casey Affleck. But the tone of the film is like Bitcoin — it’s real, but it’s not real at the same time type of thing.
One of the things about Doug that’s very unique is he will redo things like he’s a very unique filmmaker. So what was your experience working with Doug as compared to, say, Kevin on, on The Runner?
GADOT: Doug is so wonderful. He would try different things at different times. He’s very associative. He’ll have different ideas. He’ll have us reshooting a scene we already shot because he wants to play with it. He’s very that type of director.
And Kevin was amazing on this film. I feel like he’s more cerebral. He’s very methodical with the way that he films and the way that he thinks. He kind of knows what he wants to get from the very first moment.
The Runner is available to stream on Prime Video.
- Release Date
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September 2, 2026
- Runtime
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84 Minutes
- Director
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Kevin Macdonald
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