Yes, Justin Lin also directed this year’s Star Trek Beyond. However, I think it’s safe to say that when Legendary Films was looking for some to make a movie based on Mattel’s tiny metal racing car toys, they might have looked back a little bit further in his resume.
From The Hollywood Reporter (warning: racing puns abound):
Lin’s boarding injects some nitrous oxide into the project; Lin, his partner Troy Craig Poon, and Legendary will begin a search for a writer to take Hot Wheels back to the starting line. The project is in the early development stages and will not be Lin’s next movie.
Hot Wheels is one of the world’s biggest toy brands, with Mattel claiming that it is the best-selling toy in the world, with more than 5 billion toy cars produced since 1968. Mattel creates nine million cars every week and sells 10 every second.
Best-selling or not, that’s a lot of toy cars over the last half-century. Which means if Lin can bring over even a fraction of his fast and/or furious magic to the film—he directed the third through sixth films in the F&F franchise, turning it into one of the highest-grossing movie properties in existence—he’ll be creating not just a mega-hit, but a series with the potential to appeal to young kids pretty much forever. Given that the Fast and the Furious movies have always been basically Hot Wheels movies anyway, I think he’s probably got this one in the bag.