Will the Fast and the Furious franchise dump the cars to become a series of heist films?

Is this a good idea or a bad one? According to Deadline, Universal is apparently ready to change the formula behind one of its most successful franchises, essentially, as a supposed preemptive move to appeal to a broader audience (i.e. make more money). Basically, they want to move away from the car culture element that makes The Fast and the Furious the Fast and the Furious, and make the following sequels more akin to straight-up heist films.

Here’s Universal chairman Adam Fogelson speaking to Deadline:

“The question putting Fast Five and Fast Six together for us was: Can we take it out of being a pure car culture movie and into being a true action franchise in the spirit of those great heist films made 10 or 15 years ago?”

“We’ve heard so many people say, ‘I’ve never seen one, and I’ve never wanted to see one,’ about the Fast franchise. So if these movies were still about street racing, there was probably a ceiling on how many people would buy tickets. We wanted to see if we could raise it out of about racing and make car driving ability just a part of the movie, like those great chases in The French Connection, The Bourne Identity, The Italian Job.”

So rather than appeal to a niche demographic, Universal wants to remove the one element unique to these films – which are absolutely already heist films – and make them more… generic? Name-dropping something like THE FRENCH CONNECTION is some dangerous shit, particularly coming from a suit.

What do you guys think? From what I’ve been hearing, FAST FIVE delivers and is probably bound to make a lot of dough this weekend. For better or worse, this is one of THE defining franchises of this generation. So why fix a formula that isn’t broken?