HOLLYWOOD -- After his back-to-back blockbuster movies The Fast and the Furious and XXX, it seems strange to see Vin Diesel in a small independent film like A Man Apart.
In this dark drama about the Mexican drug pipeline to America, Diesel plays a rogue undercover agent who vows to destroy the most powerful of the Mexican cartels.
"I call A Man Apart my victory movie. I filmed it right after completing The Fast and the Furious and right before XXX. It was the first time I was able to get a major movie green lit," says Diesel.
"So much of my life was spent trying to get someone to come up with a few thousand dollars for an idea I had and here New Line came to me with a $30-million flick. That marked a victory for me as a creator, filmmaker and an actor."
Though he won't reveal Diesel's salary, producer Vincent Newman admits: "This is the last time anyone got Vin Diesel so cheap. We negotiated his salary for A Man Apart even before he signed onto The Fast and the Furious so we were really lucky."
Diesel earned $100,000 for Saving Private Ryan, $2.5 million for The Fast and the Furious and $10 million for XXX. He has negotiated an $11-million payday for the first of his Chronicles of Riddick movies and $20 million plus profit points for each of the two XXX sequels.
"I think it is inevitable big time that there will be sequels to XXX. There are two that are being written right now.
"One will take place in and around Washington and the other in the Orient but I won't be able to get to either of them until I have two or three other commitments out of the way."
The first of those projects is Chronicles of Riddick. Diesel, 35, is currently in Vancouver working on last minute touches to the screenplay for The Chronicles of Riddick and in casting the film. "We already have Judi Dench, Colme Feore and Ja Rule signed on and we're thinking of Thandie Newton. We hope to begin filming early in April for a 2004 release."
The Riddick films are based on the character Diesel created in the 2000 sci-fi film Pitch Black. Shot in 1999 for $23 million, Pitch Black returned $40 million in North America alone and triple that internationally.
"The plan is to have three Riddick movies. They are not sequels to Pitch Black, but rather explorations of Riddick's universe."
He promises "it won't be essential to have seen Pitch Black to understand the conflicts of Riddick.
"It will be a bit like the relationship of The Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings movies."
'HANDS-ON ACTOR'
A Man Apart was filmed in 2001, but Diesel and co-stars Larenz Tate and Jacqueline Obradors reshot several scene earlier this year.
The man who returned in February was a superstar but Obradors insists, "Vin's trailer was bigger but his attitude wasn't. He's a very generous, focused actor."
For his part, Diesel says celebrity hasn't impacted that much on his personal or professional life.
"I've never come into a film without having the option to have input into my character. I've always been a very hands-on actor," explains Diesel.
Diesel says he has always been a private person but is flattered when comedians make jokes about him "because this kind of recognition is what I've dreamed of since I was seven years old."
Diesel hopes his future workload will include a remake of Guys and Dolls, the 1955 screen musical that starred Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra and Jean Simmons.
"I talked to (producer) Harvey Weinstein at a party. He's so excited about the response to Chicago that he's looking for other musical projects.
"I told Harvey I was really excited about playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls because it was a movie I saw with my father when I was a child and it has stuck with me all this time.
"I'm terrified at the prospect of having to sing on camera especially opposite Nicole Kidman who really wants in but it's the kind of fear I seek these days."
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