Director Justin Lin was at the head of the “Fast and Furious” franchise for its last four installments, providing the fast pace and high adrenaline action that is expected with the movies.

His successor, James Wan, will have some pretty big shoes to fill when he sits at the helm for “Fast and Furious 7.” Fans will expect him to take the creativity he has used for horror films such “Saw,” “Insidious,” “Dead Silence” and “The Conjuring” and put it into to the racing films.

Wan recently sat down with CraveOnline to discuss the movie which is set to hit theaters July 11, 2014.

This won’t be Wan’s first action movie. He directed the 2007 film “Death Sentence” and hopes to bring some of that experience to a bigger stage.

“I love what I did in Death Sentence but that was a low budget action film,” Wan said. “Now I get the chance to do bigger stuff and I feel like I have the money to play with in a bigger sandbox, so I think my action will be pretty damn cool. At least I’m hoping to.”

After it was announced Wan would be taking over for Lin, there were some who joked the “Insidious” director would make “Fast and Furious 7” a horror movie. While he won’t have demon-like figures jumping out in front of Dominic Torretto’s car, the 36-year old director wants to make sure the movie is as “intense” as possible.

The stuff I’m designing, I want my action scenes to be intense. I wanted them to be suspenseful and scary in that respect,” said Wan, who is currently promoting “Insidious Two.” “It’s not ghost scary but in the same way when you watch the first Die Hard, the action scenes were actually really tense and I know it doesn’t quite fully fit into the world of Fast and the Furious but I want to bring some of that flavor to this.”

 

“Fast and Furious 7” will be the first in a trilogy of new “Fast and Furious.” films.