Money often tends to speak louder than anything else in Hollywood, which goes some way to explaining why Dwayne Johnson reneged on his word to return to the Fast & Furious franchise, having departed the long-running series on account of his well-publicised issues with Vin Diesel.

The chrome-domed behemoths had regularly butted heads and taken shots at each other in the media, forcing Johnson to state publicly that he would never again share the screen with cinema’s foremost enthusiast of sleeveless apparel. The fence appears to have been mended, but it got plenty broken beforehand.

Before production had even wrapped on the eighth chapter, The Fate of the Furious, Johnson hinted that waters were choppy behind the scenes after referring to his male co-stars as “candy asses”, sharing that his blood was “legit boiling” in scenes where he’s standing opposite the colleagues who went unnamed.

Johnson then sat out the ninth instalment altogether in favour of headlining spinoff Hobbs & Shaw alongside Jason Statham, which kept him as part of the Fast family without having to put him directly into Diesel’s orbit, not that either of them would stop tossing barbs in the other’s direction.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, ‘The Rock’ offered some insight into the tensions. “What I came to realize is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophies on how we approach moviemaking and collaborating,” he explained. “It took me some time, but I’m grateful for that clarity. Whether we work together again or not.”

Diesel then stopped just short of comparing himself to Federico Fellini when suggesting that one of the main reasons he and Johnson weren’t getting along was due to the “tough love” he laid on his opposite number to aid in his performance. “That took a lot of work. We had to get there and sometimes, at that time, I could give a lot of tough love,” he said. “Not Fellini-esque, but I would do anything I’d have to do in order to get performances in anything I’m producing”.

Johnson’s response to that sentiment was to say he “laughed hard” before referring to the future of the Fast & Furious franchise as “movies they do that will be without me”. However, Diesel continued trying to coax The Rock into a comeback, crossing a line when he invoked the name of the late Paul Walker in a post to his millions of social media followers.

“Vin’s recent public post was an example of his manipulation,” Johnson offered in rebuttal. “I didn’t like that he brought up his children in the post, as well as Paul Walker’s death. Leave them out of it. We had spoken months ago about this and came to a clear understanding”. This came after Diesel had been informed “directly – and privately – that I would not be returning to the franchise”.

From the outside looking in, it would seem as though Johnson and Diesel are back on solid ground after he popped up in the credits scene of Fast X. However, he shot his scenes independently of Diesel and was then announced to be headlining another spinoff for his Luke Hobbs character. There was no mention of his involvement in any of the upcoming entries in the main Fast Saga, though, and if he and Diesel don’t end up in the same film at the same time, then it remains up for debate as to whether or not they’re really back on speaking terms.