Nerds have it tough nowadays. What was once their bread and butter (comic books, tech gadgets, and video games) are now popular, totally acceptable interests. Luckily, there is still one bastion of hope left; something so nerdy that the mainstream dare not touch it. No matter what happens, Dungeons & Dragons will always be their own. And Vin Diesel will always be their master.
Anyone who goes toe-to-toe with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is certainly disqualified from being called a nerd, right? Wrong, because Vin Diesel is the biggest nerd that you know. Vin has been a religious Dungeons & Dragons fan for 20 years. Some amazing D&D&Diesel facts:
- He taught Judi Dench how to play while filming Chronicles of Riddick. I repeat, Dame Judi Dench is rolling 20-sided-die somewhere in the world right now.
- He has tattoos of his Dungeons & Dragons character, Melkor, which he named after a character from The Simarillion (which is essentially the encyclopedia of Lord of the Rings, which is my vote for the nerdiest book out there.)
- He wrote the foreword to the 30th Anniversary edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
- He was a night club bouncer who would spend his nights off treating canvas D&D maps to make them look like hundred year old manuscripts.
- In this great interview clip, Vin evens alludes to his D&D days as the basis for his acting career and a “training ground for [his] imagination.”
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Vin is a real nerd. And now, someone has finally had the good sense to make a movie of it. The Last Witch Hunter (opening October 23rd) is a script based on Vin Diesel’s original D&D character. He describes it as a “mix betwen James Bond and Dungeons & Dragons.” And while I may have no idea what the hell that means, or any idea what is going on in this trailer, I do know that it ends with Vin wielding a flaming sword. And I am sure he is very happy about that.
Smashcuts Film 
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