Vin Diesel Promises "A Merging Of Brands" For Marvel's Phase Three; Working On Something For 2016

These days, it feels like Vin Diesel is the new president of Marvel Studios. Since revealing he took a meeting with the company in late June, the Riddick star seemingly can't stop talking about Marvel movies. He's teased various different announcements culminating in his voicing the tree character Groot in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy. But for most fans, that felt like a very anti-climactic finish to Diesel's summer of Marvel madness.

Now it seems Groot might just be the beginning. In a new interview, Diesel suggests he might be doing more with Marvel in the future, and teases Phase Three features "a merging of brands."

Diesel said all of this hour long interview with Maria Menounos. Thanks to Bleeding Cool for the transcription of the Marvel parts below.

Here are the Marvel bits:

When I met with Marvel it wasn't for anything immediate, it was to talk about a film that would be introduced in the Phase 3 part of Marvel, not for a few years. You wouldn't be able to see it for a few years. In my mind, Marvel were doing it right, they were enrolling me at the ground level which is the best way to enrol me.

I had heard people over the last year, people saying on the social media page saying "What's up Vin? Why aren't you going to Marvel? Why aren't you doing anything with Marvel? It would be a crime of cinematic history for you not to be in [Marvel movies]"

So I was thinking "This Marvel thing is really becoming really important for these people. What can I do? What should I think about?"

I get the call, I go down to Marvel. A great meeting. It was even talking about something so big I can't even talk about because it's like the merging of brands in a way, which I won't get into. That was something way, way, way, way, way down the road.

Then this regarding Comic-Con:

We had agreed not to say anything about the specifics of the meeting. So, now I've got the fans who I love more than I love the industry, than I love everybody... I was thinking "I've got to be real with them, I've got to tell them something" and yet I want to be respectful of people's process and if people like to do a slow reveal, you know?

Quite frankly, it would have been too much to say and it might have been anticlimactic to say "We're working on something for 2016" and so I just said "You're going to hear some really big news" and I left at the end of that and it went crazy.

He then explained that voicing Groot was just a way to feed fan demand before 2016:

The next Monday, Marvel talks to me and says "We're going to send something over in two weeks. We want to focus on the 2016 but we also want to, if possible, answer this growing request for something now." I don't have six months to play a character in the immediate future, it's all booked... there was no way I was going to be able to deliver... after Comic-Con, we were at a stalemate...

Wow. So much info there and there's much more in the hour long interview with Menounos.

So it's speculation time. Diesel is the voice of Groot, but that's just a small thing. Phase Three's rumored mix of Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers to battle Thanos seems to fit his description of "merging brands." But what about this 2016 role for Diesel? It's obviously the fresh IP Diesel recently talked about. And the timing places it post Ant-Man but pre-Avengers 3. Maybe he is still Thanos or Vision. Doctor Strange? Less likely.

What do you think?