Vin Diesel announced he is Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy and although we were surprised he wasn’t in The Avengers 2, in hindsight it makes perfect sense. When Diesel met with Marvel over a month ago, he posed next to a classic Avengers comic book and that led the world to believe he was joining the superhero conglomerate. That turned out to be partially true -- he was joining a superhero group, it was just Guardians of the Galaxy.
Diesel spoke to the Los Angeles Times recently and told them how he made his decision. "I’m an actor. Not everything has to be the most obvious choice. And sometimes, the best thing you can do -- as far as Steven Spielberg and his advice -- is to defy expectations,” Diesel said.
The actor, who will be seen in Riddick next month, enjoyed the process of surprising everyone. “So if everybody thinks you’re going to go for this one thing and you flip it entirely and go for the strangest Marvel character, it’s interesting. And when something is interesting, it’s inspiring.”
He then went on to admit that it was extremely difficult to go to Comic-Con last month and not tell everyone, given that the audience there would have been the most obvious to welcome the news.
“I have been secretive about this. I went to Comic-Con and I got blasted while I was on the Hall H panel for Riddick,” Diesel said. “Someone asked a Marvel question. I couldn’t say anything because of that secrecy."
That must have taken a whole lot of control to bite his tongue, given that Diesel is more than open about everything he does... he who put those pics of Riddick on his Facebook page while he was shooting!
Guardians of the Galaxy is currently shooting with Benicio del Toro, Zoe Saldana and Chris Pratt as the group’s leader. It lands in theaters August 1, 2014.