Vin Diesel is mainly known today for a film series: Fast and Furious. But the action star also tries his luck in other genres. In 2015, a fantasy film was released that was based on a personal passion: his love for Dungeons & Dragons. However, critics were not impressed.
What film is it about? In 2015, The Last Witch Hunter was released. In the fantasy film directed by Breck Eisner, Vin Diesel played the character Kaulder. The former witch hunter still lives in modern times because the witch queen cursed him with immortality. But when she is revived, he must face the battle again.
The film actually exists only because Vin Diesel is a big fan of Dungeons & Dragons. The character Kaulder is based on his own DnD character Melkor, as he explained in an interview with uproxx.com in 2015:
About four years ago, I met a writer named Cory Goodman and we started talking. Someone brought us together because he was a D&D player. [Cory] then wrote an entire film about my character Melkor.
Vin Diesel in 2015 about the film The Last Witch Hunter
In the interview, it is clear that Vin Diesel has a great passion for DnD. He also talks about the class of the witch hunter and which edition he played. This reminds me of Henry Cavill, who is a big Warhammer nerd. Unfortunately, the passion could not save the film. The Last Witch Hunter did not perform well at all.
Critics were not impressed, the film flopped in the USA
How did the film fare? Although Elijah Wood was on board as another well-known actor, the film did not perform well at all. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a disastrous critic score of 18% based on 138 reviews. The dialogues, the story, and Vin Diesel’s performance were especially criticized.
The audience was also not particularly thrilled. With over 25,000 reviews, the film only scores 44%. The earnings reflect this quite well. With a relatively high budget of 90 million US dollars, the film could only gross about 147 million US dollars (via IMDb).
In the USA, it only made 27 million dollars, the same result as in China. Thus, the film is considered a flop (via Moviepilot). Usually, a film should gross twice as much due to marketing costs to be considered a success.
Is there no sequel coming? Normally, there is only a sequel if a film is really successful. Already at the release, there were reports of a possible sequel. Then it went quite quiet. However, Vin Diesel seems not to have completely forgotten the universe.
As CBR reports, the actor hinted in 2024 that it is not over yet with the witch hunter. In an Instagram post, he wrote about the subject: I can’t wait to see where the immortal goes next.
However, there was no official information about a new film or other projects in the universe of The Last Witch Hunter. What do you think about the film? Feel free to write it in the comments. Just because a big name is behind it, it doesn’t mean that a film will also be a success. Tom Cruise also realized this: A fantasy film with Tom Cruise was supposed to kick off a large universe like Marvel – But it was a flop
