Random Things of Vin Diesel Is A Low-Key Ultranerd (11 items)

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  (#1) He Founded His Own Video Game Studio

  In 2002, Vin Diesel founded video game company Tigon Studios. Not only does the company produce games based off of his famous action characters like Riddick, but Diesel also voices the characters himself. Tigon Studios also produced the driving-based game Wheelman.

  After several years of inactivity, Diesel reactivated the company in 2013 to make another Riddick game. According to Diesel, the games are a way to “flesh out the mythology more” without having to spend tens of millions of dollars making films.
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  (#6) He Acquired The Rights To Riddick So He Could Invent His Own Sci-Fi Universe

  After turning down a role in 2 Fast 2 Furious, Diesel agreed to make a cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in exchange for the rights to the Riddick series.

  In 2013, Riddick director David Twohy explained to HuffPost how Diesel managed the deal:

  After Chronicles, they said, “We are out of the Riddick business. It’s just a straight business calculation of us. You spent too much money and you didn’t make enough back. So, no, we’re not going to do anymore.” Vin, being the savvy guy he is, said, “Well, give me the rights back.” And they didn’t want to do that... I think this was about the time that Fast 3 had already shot and they were testing it. Maybe it wasn’t testing as well as it should have and they decided, “Maybe we need a cameo from Vin” - because he wasn’t in that movie. So, I do believe that in his savviness, Vin said, “Don’t pay me for that cameo. Just give me the rights back.”
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  (#10) He's Going To Launch A New Comic Universe With 'Bloodshot'

  Vin Diesel is set to star in Bloodshot, a science-fiction/action film based on the Valiant Comics superhero that will be released in March 2020. The popular series includes over 110 issues and has sold over 7.4 million copies. Deadline reports that “Sony is being aggressive with this one,” calling it a “a franchise play.”

  In an interview, Diesel discussed what drew him to the comic book role: "[T]here’s something interesting about how the character doesn’t abandon his humanity. It’s not heightened reality, it’s based in reality. It deals with issues like post-traumatic stress disorder. The script was one of the most interesting scripts I’ve ever read."
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  (#8) 'The Last Witch Hunter' Was Based Off Of Diesel's 'D&D' Character

  Around 2011, a mutual friend introduced Diesel to writer Cory Goodman because the two shared a passion for Dungeons & Dragons. Diesel told Yahoo! that after their initial meeting, Goodman went and wrote a whole movie for Diesel’s Melkor character.

  “Just the fact that I’d be playing a witch hunter speaks to how nerdy I was about the game, how committed I was to D&D because witch hunter [wasn’t a] class by TSR [the one-time publisher of D&D] at the time,” Diesel said. “It was a character that you could get from a third party book of characters called the Arcanum. There were a few characters that started there that eventually Dungeons & Dragons took over; one of those characters was a witch hunter.” 

  For the 2015 movie The Last Witch Hunter, the Melkor character was renamed Kaulder.
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  (#9) Melkor Had A Secret Cameo In 'xXx'

  In addition to inspiring The Last Witch Hunter, Melkor also made his way into Diesel’s 2002 film xXx. As Xander Cage, Diesel sports a variety of fake tattoos, one of which is the name "Melkor."

  The inclusion of his D&D character can be considered a subtle nod to his nerdy roots while playing an extreme sports-loving rebel.
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  (#3) He Credits His Acting Career To 'D&D'

  In a 2014 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Diesel explained why he felt playing Dungeons & Dragons was some of his earliest acting training.

  "I kind of became who I am because I played Dungeons & Dragons," he said. "We acted! Every time we played, for the first couple hours we would just be talking, shooting the sh*t, and then, once we started getting into the game, everything changed!"  

  Diesel added that he was "lucky" because he grew up in Westbeth, an artist's commune in New York City's West Village. "There were a whole bunch of out of work artists, and if you made more than $10,000 a year you were kicked out of the building," he explained. "So all these children of artists were, you know, fantasy roleplayers and we started playing Dungeons & Dragons."

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