Talk of a third instalment in the Riddick franchise continues in a sporadic manner with series star Vin Diesel discussing a few details via his facebook page. The Riddick franchise began in 2000 with the release of ‘Pitch Black’ which was directed by David Twohy.
Filmed in Australia ‘Pitch Black’ was an effective suspenseful science fiction horror survival story which took the crew of a downed space craft, and placed them in a hostile environment where they needed to formulate an escape. With a production budget of $23 million, ‘Pitch Black’ returned approximately $53 million worldwide from its theatrical run.
In 2004 both Vin Diesel and David Twohy returned to the franchise with the sequel ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’. The sequel opened up the universe established in ‘Pitch Black’, with a larger budget the film explored new worlds and empires that exist within the mythology of the setting.
Despite being allocated a much larger production budget of $120 million, the sequel did not perform as well as expected yielding approximately $107 million world wide. Since then the franchise has been kept alive with several video games, animated shorts and a direct to DVD animated film.
Despite disappointing revenues from the previous film, rumours of a third film in the franchise have continued, the latest talk comes from Vin Diesel who posted the following comments on his face book page;
So the director of Riddick, my partner on COR since the beginning, DT [David Twohy]… has a new challenge in store. He wants me to have 3 different body looks for this next chapter… There is the DiNorscio type, the Dom type, and the lean Furyan type… but all in the same movie, haha… When it comes to art, we all like a challenge.
P.s. We will hit Our next Milestone… but, what day?
It appears he is referring to the body types of the different characters he has played from several films, and that things are moving along albeit slowly for a new film in the Riddick franchise.
With so few details and things appearing to be in the earliest phases of pre-production, it’s likely to be a number of years before we might see this franchise return to theatres.
