'Fast Five' Sequel To Be Split Into Two Movies

Splitting movies into two parts seems to be the thing to do nowadays, starting with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Since then we know we get to see Breaking Dawn in two parts (Woo. Hoo.), and the Hobbit will be delivered to us in two installments as well.  Now, the creators of the next installment of The Fast and the Furious series have decided to go the same way, claiming that the story they have is too big to be contained in one movie.

It's hard to believe, as none of the other movies in the series ever had a story big enough to be properly told in just one movie, but according to Vin Diesel, that's the case.  In an interview with THR, Diesel said,

"With the success of ['Fast Five'], and the inclusion of so many characters, and the broadening of scope, when we were sitting down to figure out what would fit into the real estate of number six, we didn't have enough space...We have to pay off this story, we have to service all of these character relationships, and when we started mapping all that out it just went beyond 110 pages.  The studio said, 'You can't fit all that story in one damn movie!'"

Character relationships.  Right.  I don't want to fault Diesel if this is true and they have come up with something that needs two movies to develop the story, but people didn't see Fast Five in droves because the characters were interesting.  I'm guessing that the studios have other reasons for doing this, around 600 million of them.  Either way, I did enjoy Fast Five, with all of its absurd action sequences, and this is nothing to complain about if the next two films can replicate that energy.