F9 in Tbilisi: How the Final Chase Was Filmed and What Cars Were In It
On 19 August 2019 Universal started filming the ninth Fast & Furious in central Tbilisi and worked in the city for a month. Rustaveli Avenue and Freedom Square were closed for the shoot, and the Parliament, the National Gallery and the Opera all ended up on screen.
This guide covers how Tbilisi got the shoot, what was filmed and on which streets, what happens in the Tbilisi scenes, which cars took part in the final chase, and how to drive the route today.
Why Hollywood filmed in Tbilisi
Universal did not pick Tbilisi by accident. Since 2016 Georgia has run a state programme called Film in Georgia: a foreign studio that shoots in the country gets back part of what it spends there. The programme is run by the Enterprise Georgia agency.
The base rebate is 20 percent of the expenses confirmed by an audit report. Another 2 to 5 percent is paid for passing a cultural test: to pass it, the film has to show Georgia itself rather than an anonymous foreign country.
In F9 that condition is met literally: the final part of the picture is captioned "Tbilisi" on screen, with no disguise as another city. Enterprise Georgia put the economic effect of the shoot at around 10 million dollars and spoke of 425 local hires. Those figures were reported by Eurasianet.
We covered the cars with a star history that sit in the Tbilisi fleet in a separate piece, and track days at Rustavi Motorpark in another one.
How the shoot ran
The shoot took a month, and for all of it traffic in the centre ran on a changing schedule. Streets were closed one at a time, each for a few days, with the dates announced in advance through the city hall and the local press.
Filming ran from 19 August to 20 September 2019. Filming took place in six places: Rustaveli Avenue, Freedom Square, Vazha-Pshavela Avenue, Besarion Jghenti and Avto Varazi streets, and University street. One more set was built in a shopping centre in Rustavi, 25 kilometres from the capital. The crew numbered 600 people in all.
The restrictions lasted longest on Rustaveli itself: it was closed to traffic from 26 August to 1 September, and on the night of the 26th the stretch from Freedom Square to the former Central Post Office building was shut. Public transport ran on alternative routes until 27 August.
The chases and stunts were filmed by a separate crew under Spiro Razatos, stunt coordinator on every film in the franchise. On large productions such a crew works in parallel with the main one: one films the actors, the other the crashes, jumps and drive-throughs. Vin Diesel posted a video from the first day of filming on his Instagram.
Street filming was only part of the work. According to Universal's production notes, most of the picture was shot on soundstages: the drive-throughs and the stunts were filmed on the streets of Tbilisi, while the rest of the finale was finished at the studio.
What happens in the Tbilisi scenes
What was shot in Tbilisi went into the finale, and nearly all of the action there is built around one vehicle. The villains Otto and Jakob drive through the city in the armoured hauler called the Armadillo, waiting for the Aries satellite programme to finish uploading. Dominic Toretto's crew catches the convoy in cars fitted with electromagnets, drags the escort vehicles off course with them and finally flips the hauler. Along the way Han and Mia break into one of the convoy's armoured cars and pull the hostage Elle out of it.
The main set was built opposite the Parliament, and what was filmed there was the magnet sequence. In the story the Toretto crew's cars pull other vehicles in and throw them off, so on camera the cars have to fly. From the outside it looked the way Eurasianet described it: catapults hurling cars at the Armadillo against the backdrop of the National Gallery and the Opera, while tourists on Rustaveli looked around, finding themselves in the middle of an action film.
The catapults were not used in every shot: some of the stunts were simpler than they look on screen. Stunt coordinator Andy Gill has said the magnet scenes were filmed with techniques from thirty years ago. An empty car, for instance, would simply be fixed to the rear of the Chevrolet Nova that Letty drives, and on camera it looked as though a magnet had pulled it there.
The cars of the final chase
Cars in the Fast & Furious films are matched to the characters. Five of them appear in the Tbilisi chase, and the set was assembled by picture car coordinator Dennis McCarthy with his British counterpart Alex King.
| Car | Behind the wheel | What happens to it |
|---|---|---|
| 1968 Dodge Charger with a mid-mounted engine | Dom | Drags the convoy's escort cars off with magnets |
| Toyota GR Supra, 2020 model year, orange and black | Han and Mia | Magnets itself to an armoured car, crushed by the hauler in the finale |
| 1969 Chevrolet Nova | Letty | Covers the chase |
| The Armadillo | Otto and Jakob | Armoured hauler, flipped in the finale |
| Didgori-2 | Otto's guards | Convoy armoured car carrying the hostage |
The mid-engine Charger is the strangest car in the film: the body of a 1968 Dodge Charger, but with the engine sitting behind the driver. According to Universal's production notes, it was built with the shop SpeedKore, which has worked on the franchise since the seventh film. SpeedKore later built a road-going version called Hellacious: a 6.2-litre Hellcat V8 making 707 horsepower and a Graziano transaxle from a Lamborghini Gallardo, covered in detail by Motor1 and The Drive.
A production 1968 Dodge Charger. The film car has the same body, but with the engine moved behind the driver. Photo: Calreyn88, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Han's Supra is an orange and black Toyota GR Supra. The same production notes list it as a 2020 model year car: model years run ahead of calendar years, so a Supra like this already existed by the autumn 2019 shoot. The colours were chosen as a throwback to the Mazda RX-7 Han drove in Tokyo Drift. In the finale the Supra attaches itself to the hauler and dies under it.
A Toyota GR Supra in orange. Han's car in the film is the same model with black trim. Photo: Tokumeigakarinoaoshima, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Armadillo was built for the film. According to Universal's production notes, it is an armoured, three-section vehicle 14 feet high and weighing 26 tons. Alex King's department spent four months on the engineering and the build and produced two of them, so that they would stand up to stunt driving on the curved, hilly streets of Tbilisi. It was for this hauler that the catapults were set up on Rustaveli.
Letty's Nova is a 1969 Chevrolet Nova, again per the Universal notes. A photo of this car taken near the set went round Reddit, where it was first taken for Eleanor from Gone in 60 Seconds. The correction came quickly:
A 1969 Chevrolet Nova, the model Letty drives in the film. Photo: dave_7, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
It’s a Chevy Nova, not Eleanor 😉
u/andytudor, r/fastandfurious
Didgori-2: a Georgian armoured car in the convoy
One vehicle in the villains' convoy is familiar in Georgia from military parades. The Didgori-2 is an armoured car from the Tbilisi research centre Delta, assembled on a Ford Super Duty chassis; the Didgori family was first shown at the Independence Day parade on 26 May 2011.
The Didgori-2 armoured car, photographed by its maker, the Tbilisi centre Delta. Photo: STC Delta, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
In the film one of these runs in Otto's convoy, and it is to its side that Han magnets the Supra. Neither Delta nor Universal ever announced the Didgori's appearance, so the only way to recognise the car is from the footage itself.
Release and the Tbilisi premiere
The picture reached audiences later than planned: the premiere was postponed twice because of the pandemic. It went out in May and June 2021.
In its first weekend in United States cinemas the film took 70 million dollars. At the time that was the best result of the pandemic era. Worldwide it reached 726 million dollars.
Tbilisi saw the film before American audiences did. The premiere was held on 20 May 2021 at the Cavea cinema in City Mall, a month before the American one, as Georgia Today reported.
Driving the filming route today
All the filming locations are in central Tbilisi, and one evening covers them all.
The route starts at Freedom Square. Then comes Rustaveli Avenue, lined by the Parliament, the National Gallery and the Opera: those are the facades seen in the final chase. From there the road climbs to Vazha-Pshavela and leads into the university quarter, where the convoy drive-throughs were filmed.
The avenue is worth walking as well. On the stretch between Freedom Square and Rustaveli Square, besides the Parliament and the Opera, stand the Georgian National Museum, Kashveti Church, the National Gallery and the Rustaveli Theatre. A walk like that means leaving the car somewhere, and parking in the centre is paid: we covered how it works in a separate piece.
For fast driving on a circuit there is Rustavi Motorpark, half an hour from the city.
The route comes closer to the film in the right car. American muscle on the level of the Nova is not in Georgia's rental fleets, but sports cars are: the AutoHub fleet has a Chevrolet Corvette C8 at 400 dollars a day, a Porsche 911 Turbo S at 800 and a Ferrari 296 GTB at 1300.
Questions people ask about the shoot
Which F9 scenes were filmed in Tbilisi? The final chase: the convoy with the Armadillo runs along Rustaveli, Freedom Square and Vazha-Pshavela.
When was F9 filmed in Tbilisi? From 19 August to 20 September 2019, with traffic restrictions on a published schedule.
Which actors worked in Tbilisi? Universal published no name-by-name list. What is documented is that Vin Diesel posted a video from the first day of filming, and that the chases and stunts were filmed by Spiro Razatos's crew.
What is the armoured car in the villains' convoy? A Didgori-2 from the Tbilisi centre Delta, built on a Ford Super Duty chassis and familiar in Georgia from military parades.
What car does Dom drive in the finale? A 1968 Dodge Charger with a mid-mounted engine, built with the SpeedKore shop. The road-going version of that car has a 6.2-litre Hellcat V8 and a gearbox from a Lamborghini Gallardo.
What is the Armadillo? An armoured three-section hauler built for the film: 14 feet high and 26 tons. Two of them were made.
What did the shoot bring Georgia? Around 10 million dollars and 425 jobs for local specialists, by Enterprise Georgia's estimate. The production came through the Film in Georgia programme with its 20 percent rebate.
How much did F9 take at the box office? 726 million dollars worldwide, on a 70 million dollar opening weekend in the United States.
Can the filming locations be visited? Yes, all of them are in central Tbilisi: Rustaveli, Freedom Square, Vazha-Pshavela and the university quarter.
There is no need to collect the car from an office for this route: delivery brings it to any point of Tbilisi in about half an hour and picks it up the same way.
Write to the concierge on WhatsApp or Telegram at +995 557 437 034 or to concierge@autohub.ge, name the model and the dates, and the documents and the deposit will be checked before the car is delivered.
Cover photo: shankar s., Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
