Vin Diesel sure does know how to fan the flames of very geeky speculation. After reporting about a meeting with Marvel brass a few weeks ago on his Facebook page, the action star continued to tease his possible involvement with the studio while promoting "Riddick" at Comic-Con over the weekend.
At the panel for "Riddick" on Friday, when an attendee quizzed Diesel on those Marvel rumors, the typically garrulous "Fast & Furious" star became unusually tight-lipped. "It's the one thing I'm not supposed to talk about," Diesel told the crowd. "There is some very big news coming at the end of this month."
When Diesel made the initial Facebook post, fan speculation was that the bald star would play Vision, an evil android who eventually becomes a member of the superhero team The Avengers. Keep in mind that the Diesel/"Riddick" panel was a day before Marvel announced that the next "Avengers" movie will be subtitled "Age of Ultron." Ultron, in the Marvel universe, is a villainous robot who creates Vision. Are the dots all starting to connect? Look for more information to come out next month during Disney's D23 Expo.
But while you mull over which Marvel character Vin Diesel could potentially play, you should take a couple of minutes and watch the new red-band trailer for "Riddick." The movie, which serves as a sequel to both the original "Pitch Black" and the somewhat iffier world-expander "Chronicles of Riddick," looks like it's going back to its R-rated roots, with a tale involving intergalactic monsters and similarly murderous mercenaries who are after Riddick, the stone-cold killer whose eyes have been genetically "polished" so he can see in the dark.
The trailer is most assuredly not safe for work, with curse words and buckets of blood, but it seems to deliver on the promise of "Pitch Black" in a way that "Chronicles of Riddick" didn't. This new "Riddick" looks nasty and violent (nothing like an at-the-jaw decapitation), and it features some startlingly awesome monster designs. In short: we're in.
"Riddick" hits theaters September 6.
[via Deadline, Vulture]
