Vin Diesel wasn't going to cameo in Diesel has become the face of Fast & Furious, appearing in eight of the franchise's ten films.
It is easy to now think of Fast & Furious as Diesel's franchise, but that was not the case early on. He might've been a co-lead in The Fast and the Furious opposite Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner, but Diesel didn't return for 2 Fast 2 Furious. His absence from the series nearly continued with Tokyo Drift as well. Outside of a cameo at the very end of the movie, Toretto had no role to play and Diesel's time with the franchise was thought to be nearly over. In fact, Diesel only agreed to do a cameo in Tokyo Drift if Universal gave him the rights to another franchise in return.
When Universal and Diesel's team were negotiating his return for Tokyo Drift and the fourth installment of the franchise, Diesel proposed to by his usual actor's fee for the Tokyo Drift cameo. In exchange for his time though, Riddick films at that time and wanted to make sure he was in charge of the franchise's future. Universal agreed to this demand and gave Diesel's production company One Race the rights to Riddick in exchange of his cameo in Tokyo Drift.
After completing the deal for Riddick's rights, Diesel and One Race pushed forward to make a the script is almost done. Diesel has even teased that a Riddick TV series could be in the works.
Trading the rights to a franchise for a cameo in a different franchise isn't the type of deal that happens regularly in Hollywood, but in this case it proved to be a win-win scenario. Universal managed to secure Diesel's place in the Fast & Furious franchise, while Diesel's stardom was raised from the continued success of the films. This not only gave Diesel confidence that Riddick could be a success, but his continued relationship with Universal led to the studio becoming the distributor for Riddick again. With F9 is released in 2021, and the need for Dom to cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift made it all possible.
