If you’ve ever thought of Vin Diesel as a wooden actor who can only speak in monosyllabic words, then boy do I have some news for you. The Riddick star has been hinting for a while now that he was involved in an upcoming Marvel film somehow – the rumours ranged from Thanos to the android Vision – saying that we should expect some news at the end of the month.
Well either Diesel has not yet figured out how calendars work, or he just got a little impatient as he probably/kind of/definitely just confirmed that he will be providing the voice of Groot in director James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
Early yesterday morning, Diesel suddenly changed the cover photo on his Facebook page to that of Guardians member Groot. He changed the photo again soon thereafter though, deleting it from his timeline. There’s just one problem: Diesel has an insanely popular Facebook page of about 45 million Likes, and you can bet your physics defying sportscar that a bunch of them saw it and posted about it.
Since then Deadline has all but officially confirmed that Diesel is indeed in talks to play Groot, who for those of you that don’t know, is the warrior prince of a race of giant living trees, and who speaks in nothing but a phrase announcing his name, “I am Groot!”. Yes, he literally has three words of dialogue. For some, this would seem like the most inspired bit of casting since Marvel hired motormouth playboy Robert Downey Jr to play motormouth playboy Tony Stark.
While I still think he would have made a pretty cool Thanos, I actually think that Diesel’s bass-rumble pipes are a perfect match for the CG-created Groot. He already has major voice-acting street cred for voicing the eponymous Iron Giant in director Brad Bird’s 1999 animated tear-jerker, so playing a tree shouldn’t be much of a challenger here.
Guardians of the Galaxy already stars Chris Pratt as Star Lord, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Michael Rooker as Yondu, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Djimon Hounsou as Korath, Benicio Del Toro as The Collector, John C. Reilly as Rhomann Dey and Glenn Close as Nova Prime, and will be opening in cinemas on August 1, 2014.
Last Updated: August 13, 2013
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 13, 2013 at 13:18
I hate it when people mix their languages. It’s either “I am big” or “Ek is groot” damn it. :/
Kervyn Cloete
August 13, 2013 at 20:24
I see what you did there!
Lourens Corleone
August 13, 2013 at 14:24
Anyone else think that the cast for this is quite incredible? Also, Amy Pond.