Vin Diesel’s Career May Be In Trouble

Does Vin Diesel need to worry about his career? It seems nuts, but there are supposedly many in the industry who struggle to work with him

By Doug Norrie | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

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Is Vin Diesel’s career in trouble? It’s hard to even conceive of such a thing considering he’s part of one of the biggest franchise’s out there as a lead and landed one of the greatest and most lucrative voice over roles ever in cinematic history. But there are rumblings about the A-lister with rumors out there that studios are becoming increasingly frustrated with him. Insider Daniel Richtman has it that there is a distancing from the actor because of some possible ego concerns, especially around his Fast & Furious franchise. 

Richtman does elaborate some on what he means when it comes to how those in the industry are viewing Vin Diesel these days. He says that “lots” of studios aren’t his biggest fan and haven’t gone out of their way to cast him in projects or roles. And then, concerning the Fast & Furious piece, there apparently is an ongoing rivalry with Diesel when it comes to Dwayne Johnson. Apparently, the former doesn’t like working with the latter, and Diesel has sought to limit Johnson’s role in that franchise to maintain the spotlight.

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In terms of this rumor mill around Vin Diesel, it doesn’t necessarily come out of nowhere. There have been rumblings for years that he was possibly difficult to work with on these sets and that he and Johnson had even had beef before. This dates all the way back to when Johnson first appeared as Luke Hobbs in Fast Five. There were some cryptic social media posts by Johnson at the time that had many assuming (probably correctly) that he and Diesel were not getting along on the set of the film. 

Whether this beef maintained isn’t totally clear considering Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson would end up working together on Fast & Furious 6, Furious 7, and The Fate of the Furious. But there was a split in the franchise with this last movie when Dwayne Johnson went off to star in Hobbs and Shaw and didn’t reprise the role for the upcoming F9. 

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There have also been rumors that Vin Diesel has specific clauses written into his contracts for the Fast & Furious movies that he can’t lose fights on screen and that he keeps track of how punches and kicks land for all the different actors involved. Again, this is merely a rumor, but there are plenty of examples that begin building to support what Richtman is talking about when it comes to his standing in the industry. Does it mean his career is in jeopardy? That feels like a stretch. It more appears a leak to try and reign in the actor if he’s getting too difficult to work with. 

And in terms of his current work, we should all strive to have our careers in “jeopardy” like Vin Diesel. In addition to F9 which will hit screens in a big way this summer, he has a ton of other work coming down the pike as well. There’s Avatar 2 which should have a 2022 release date and he’s set to reprise the Groot voice-over in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 as well. Plus he’s set to bring back Riddick in Furya. So yeah, it isn’t like the work is drying up for Diesel. Though he could get the message about being a little easier to work with.