Around this time last year, Justin Lin - who had directed three movies in the ten-movie franchise, including the acclaimed refresher 'Fast Five' - walked off the set of 'Fast X', never to return.

Lin is still credited as a producer and one of the movie's screenwriters. Two weeks into the shoot, the man credited with revitalising the franchise had walked. With a delay costing anywhere between $600,000 and $1,000,000 per day, a replacement had to be found as quick as Dom Toretto's Dodge Charger.

Enter Louis Letterier, the French director of action classics such as 'The Transporter 2' with Jason Statham, 'Unleashed' with Jet Li, and, uh, 'Grimsby' with Sacha Baron Cohen. It seemed like a natural fit, a director with over-the-top action credentials who can work fast and even has a working history with one of the franchise's stars in Jason Statham. Indeed, talking to Louis Letterier over Zoom, he's remarkably calm about the whole thing. "I had a cut of the movie very early on, like four weeks after we wrapped shooting," Letterier explains. "Sometimes, you have to search for a movie. For this, it felt right. Interestingly, because I came in late, it was guided by instinct rather than my, y'know, over-nervous, self-edited brain."

Of course, Letterier's background meant that he could hit the ground running with little or no time to waste. More to the point, 'Fast X' is the tenth movie in a franchise that's only really had one major reset in its history - a reset instigated by the director who's now walked off the movie. Yet for Letterier, inspiration for 'Fast X' came from all sorts of places - everything from Steve McQueen's ice-cold classic 'Bullitt', to the mad-cap screwball comedy 'It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World'. Indeed, Letterier talks about 'Fast X' like a twelve-course meal with tonal changes throughout. So, with these kinds of shifts, with a cast this size and this amount of expectation resting on his shoulders, how did Louis Letterier keep the plates spinning?

"I was never bored; I was going from a road trip movie with John Cena's character, to this high-octane revenge action movie, to this operatic thing with Jason Momoa, all of these spices with Vin Diesel's character, just going from week to week, switching places, moving blocks around," he explains. On the topic of his entrance to the franchise, Letterier speaks frankly about how he was drafted in as a replacement, and about what he would have done differently if he was brought in from the start.

"It's a good question, it's a tough question because I haven't asked myself that yet. The script was in great shape, so I just enhanced it to how I wanted to see it. To answer your question, actually, the great opportunity that was given was to direct the next one so I can go right down to the DNA, you know? We've just started on the next one, and I'm really, really excited about it." On the topic of a potential trilogy to close out 'Fast X', however, Letterier is a little bit circumspect. Vin Diesel had spoken on red carpet interviews about a potential trilogy, yet Letterier seems less certain of it.

"Any movie I've been involved with, and I've started a few franchises, it's one movie at a time," Letterier explains. "You have to do it one at a time. If you aim even like two movies later, or like, if you hop over the next movie, you're making a massive mistake because you don't focus on the task at hand. You don't give the best to your audience. Shooting movies back to back, that's one thing, but really, this is one movie at a time and it will always be one movie at a time."

'Fast X' is in Irish cinemas now. This interview has been edited for clarity purposes.