Vin Diesel Recounts Steven Spielberg Telling Him It's a 'Crime of Cinema' If He Stopped Directing

Back in 1995, Vin Diesel wrote and directed a short film titled Multi-Facial, which you have probably never even seen or heard of. Two years later, Diesel made his feature directorial debut in Strays. Since then, he has never really gotten behind the camera again.

Those two projects, however, caught the eye of Steven Spielberg, who casted Diesel in his 1998 film Saving Private Ryan. In an interview with The National, the Fast & Furious star said that he recently caught up with Spielberg, who praised his directorial work, and claimed that it would be a “crime of cinema” if he never directed again. 

“Speaking of Steven Spielberg, I saw him recently, and he had said to me, ‘When I wrote the role for you in ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ I was obviously employing the actor, but I was also secretly championing the director in you, and you have not directed enough,’” he recalled. “That is a crime of cinema and you must get back in the directing chair.’ I haven’t directed enough”

If Diesel does decide to get behind the camera again, it will likely be a film about the Carthaginian military general Hannibal Barca, who fought the Romans during the Second Punic War around 200 B.C.

“I haven’t done it yet,” he said. “As much as I am grateful for the accomplishments, there are moments when I go ‘God, you promised the universe, very specifically, the Hannibal Barca trilogy, and you haven’t delivered it. You travelled all over the world.'”

If Diesel is serious about directing a film about Hannibal Barca, he can almost certainly snag Spielberg as a producer, if he believes in him as much as he claims.