Paul Fischer
Moviehole caught up with the always amiable Vin Diesel this week – at the “Fast and Furious” junket in Los Angeles – to talk about his future projects. Among projects discussed, the long-gestating “Hannibal” project – Diesel would star as the Carthaginian general who led an elephant-riding battalion across the Alps to attack Rome in the 3rd Century B.C- he’s been trying to get up for years.
xXx : The Return of Xander Cage
But wait, didn’t they kill off his character in the second film?
”Ain’t that America?”, says Diesel. ”That has been recti[fied.] Rob Cohen found a way to, has incorporated that into the story years ago. It’s just now that he’s implementing it. It’s now that he’s using it. It’s a good question”.
Fast and the Furious 5
”Yes, I’m always thinking, which you probably know about me”, says Diesel. ”I think a few pictures at a time. You remember with Chronicles of Riddick, I wanted to do three films at the same time. I’m ambitious like that. So I try to work out stories in service of what I was just talking about and in the way I approach sequels, in that Coppola way. I try to think out the story, even before we go to shoot the film that’s at hand. So yes, I have been thinking about it. I actually brought up the idea of shooting both of the movies back to back with Universal, with the president of Universal. He’s like what? We’re just getting our feet back together”.
Pitch Black 3
”Well, you remember when I had talked about Riddick, I talked about Riddick as being The Fellowship in the Tolkien series”, asks Diesel. ”So I was using Pitch Black as Hobbit as the independent story that introduces you to the world of Middle Earth, and then taking the Chronicles of Riddick and treating it as a trilogy that goes from the story that you saw to the underverse and ultimately to Furia in the third film”.
David Twohy is currently writing the new film. ”It’s hot, but to answer your question specifically about the scaled down aspect, yes. There is a scaled down portion of this that goes back to the Pitch Black style of telling the story”.
”So if you think of Pitch Black as an introduction to the world. If you think of Lord of the Rings and I’m just using it as a parallel. You’re thinking of Lord of the Rings, there are three books, a trilogy. You would think of The Chronicles of Riddick as the first in that trilogy and there will be two more to follow.”
Hannibal the Conqueror
Diesel still wants to do it – the studio’s not so keen.
”This is really candid, I think the studio might be a little bit, as I can understand, apprehensive about giving me a budget that big to direct. So the question has been and probably what’s held back the film from being realized, do I have to direct it? And then my question, that’s the age old question.”
”Do I have to direct it or do I produce it, get my voice on it, put my mojo on it and let someone else direct it that a studio would feel comfortable with that size budget? Understandably. I haven’t ever done something that big. I’ve done, I’ve directed independent film.”
