Normal actors announce new projects via press release. Vin Diesel is not a normal actor. Vin Diesel uses helicopters, and social media. Yes, almost everything about Diesel is larger than life, including the way that he shares progress on a dream project like Hannibal the Conqueror.
Vin Diesel has been talking up Hannibal the Conqueror for years. But because everyone wants a piece of Diesel, the project routinely gets pushed onto his backburner. He has been busy with movies. He brought Riddick back to life. And he voiced a tree in the highest-grossing domestic movie of 2014. But Hannibal might be coming. Vin Diesel posted the above video on his Facebook page, but made it tough to embed. Thankfully, his longtime Fast and Furious cohort Tyrese Gibson placed the video on his own YouTube page, with the caption, "Vin Diesel Finds a Way." I can’t blame him. This one is so original, it needs to be seen.
The clip is wordless, but it oozes with attitude. It shows Vin Diesel taking off from a location that some of his Facebook fans have speculated is Dubai. Diesel includes a similar quote on his page, stating: "We will find a way, or we will make one." – General Barca. It’s a reference to Hamilcar Barca, Punic Carthaginian military leader and father to the man Diesel wants to play on screen some day: Hannibal.
To that end, Diesel seems to have shared a title treatment to his Hannibal movie.
MTV reported a few months back that Vin Diesel’s Hannibal was in pre-production, and we was dedicating the film to his fallen "brother," Paul Walker. He has said that he wants it to be a trilogy. In fact, he recently revealed how, on his latest birthday, the fact that he hasn’t completed Hannibal yet haunts him.
I woke up and I started to count my blessings, as we all do on our birthday, we count our blessing and then we think ‘How can I grow as a person, and how can I improve?’ And then I immediately went to, ‘I haven’t made Hannibal yet.’"
Is Vin Diesel just beating the Hannibal drum louder, from inside of a helicopter? Is that a real title treatment, and the sign that this historical war drama might finally be getting closer to production? We’ll continue to monitor Vin Diesel’s progress… and his social media pages.
