The first time we saw Vin Diesel as Richard B. Riddick was in Pitch Black, a film that was budgeted at $23 million and went on to score $39 million at the box-office and who knows how much on DVD. The 2004 sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick went on to bolster its box-office take by $18 million over Pitch Black, unfortunately $57 million at the box-office isn’t as impressive when the budget is $105 million. Even still, there have always been rumblings about more Riddick films, but those rumblings basically quieted down as the second film didn’t score any kind of real results… until now.
MTV had a word with Mr. Diesel and he is under the impression there won’t be one more Riddick film. In fact there may be two.
“David Twowy right now is writing the scripts,” Diesel told the music site. “The only question is whether we take a page from the Lord of the Rings guys and try to shoot the two chapters at the same time. There are two more in mind.”
David Twohy co-wrote and directed Pitch Black and then wrote and directed Riddick. Diesel says, “Everyone knows I love the Riddick character and I’m always working on it. It just takes five years to make another one because David Twohy and I are so precious about it.”
In terms of the proposed direction the sequels would take the characters, “Sooner or later we all end up in the Underverse,” Diesel says. The real question is whether or not anyone still cares or really ever did?
I think the Riddick films and the world he exists in are pretty cool, but I know if I was some multi-million dollar producer the script would have to be really, really, really good for me to move on it and I would be pushing hard for a budget more along the lines of the $23 million Pitch Black and I don’t expect anyone will go near the character with another $100+ million.
