With Fast Five (AKA Fast & Furious 5: Rio Heist) having muscled its way to worldwide financial success, you can’t blame Universal for shoving the pedal to the metal on the next instalment just as soon as physically possible. With director Justin Lin eschewing most other possible projects to start preparing to work on the film, it seems increasingly as though the studio is looking to capitalise on his loyalty and availability, plus locking down the cast’s services by cranking out the sixth and seventh franchise entries back to back.

According to the LA Times, while nothing is set yet, the studio has writer Chris Morgan coming up with ideas for a story that would connect across two movies, with Lin taking the Back To The Future/Lord Of The Rings/Matrix sequels model and film them simultaneously.

Though the currently untitled sixth outing is even now pencilled in for a May 2013 release, that date could always be changed if more time is needed for the extended shoot.

Back-to-back sequel shooting appears to be back in fashion at the moment: Peter Jackson’s at work on two Hobbit films, Cameron's planning double Avatar duty and just last week it emerged that Paramount was pondering the idea of making two new Transformers outings at once.

Naturally, there’s a risk with going for the double-shot approach: no one can predict if Fast & Furious 6 will be successful, and a flop could derail demand for the follow-up. But aside from a slight slow-down on the third entry, the Vin Diesel/Paul Walker franchise has proved to be consistently reliable, so who knows? We could end up seeing two Fast films speeding into cinemas within months of each other, like a sweaty, chrome-plated Harry Potter…