The latest chapter in Vin Diesel’s long-running series of Riddick films has taken a significant step towards becoming a reality.
Diesel earned widespread acclaim for his performance as Riddick in the first movie in the franchise, Pitch Black. That outing introduced audiences to Riddick as a dangerous criminal being transported to prison on a spacecraft. When the spacecraft crashes, the dwindling survivors are forced to turn to Riddick, who has surgically enhanced eyes that make him adept at seeing in the dark, as they attempt to escape the clutches of predatory aliens on an unfamiliar planet at night.
Nearly 25 years on, Riddick: Furya is set to become the fourth feature in a Riddick franchise which has also spawned video games and an animated short. Plans for the movie were being discussed as far back as 2016. That was when Diesel took to Facebook with a video explaining that production on The Chronicles of Riddick: Furia was slated to begin in 2017.
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“I couldn’t have done Riddick [before] , because I just had (his daughter) Pauline nine months ago, so whenever I’m a fresh dad, I can’t go to that dark place. But, if you give me a little time, if you let me make sure all my little angels are walking, 12 months to get us all lined up, we could be looking at starting Riddick early 2017,” he said. “It does take me a while. I usually have to go to the woods for five months.”
Diesel was joined by David Twohy, the writer of all three of the previous Riddick movies, on the video which saw the star tease that the movie would be a “little more expansive in its mythology” while Twohy was keen to stress “it will be rated R.”
The inclusion of “Furya” , the name of Riddick’s home planet, in the title of this latest movie was also seen as telling, suggesting this next installment would see the character finally return to his homeland.
Despite announcing plans for filming to commence in 2017, the project lay dormant for the next couple of years, with Diesel likely tied up with work on the Fast and Furious movies. That was until 2019 when Diesel once again took to social media with an update.
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The actor posted a picture of the Twohy’s finished script to his Instagram account. Plot details still remained scarce at this point, save for a proverb written on the front of Twohy’s script, which read: “Everyone wants to be a beast until it’s time to do what real beasts do.”
The next update came in May 2022, with Diesel sharing storyboard images from the film that depicted Riddick in a spacesuit. “Finally got a chance to see some of the new Riddick materials that DT sent over. Wow, exciting is an understatement. FURYA!” he wrote alongside it.
Even then, there were question marks over whether the Riddick sequel would see the light of day. However, everything changed in 2023 when it was formally announced that Diesel and Twohy would be returning for the long-awaited sequel. More importantly, for fans, the announcement, made via Deadline, included crucial plot details for the upcoming film.
The brief synopsis read: “Riddick finally returns to his home world, a place he barely remembers and one he fears might be left in ruins by the Necromongers. But there he finds other Furyans fighting for their existence against a new enemy. And some of these Furyans are more like Riddick than he could have ever imagined.”
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Twohy offered further clues of how the film might take shape, telling Deadline: “ “Our legion fans have demanded it for years, and now we’re finally ready to honor their call to action with Riddick: Furya,” Twhoy said. “My collaboration with Vin and One Race has spanned 20 fruitful years, as together we’ve created three movies, two video games, an anime production, and motion comics for the internet. This new big-screen event will see a return to Riddick’s homeworld, where we finally get to explore Riddick’s genesis.”
Principal photography on the movie began in August, with the sequel filming in Germany, Spain and the U.K. Production is ongoing, with Diesel posting regular updates to social media. One post depicted the actor, as Riddick, in a blue, shadowy, cave setting, rumored to be in Spain, while another showed Diesel and Twohy working on the script together.
The fact that Riddick lives on as a franchise is largely down to Diesel’s refusal to give up on the character. Arguably the breakout character from Twohy’s original sci-fi thriller, Pitch Black, which he wrote alongside Ken and Jim Wheat, big things were expected from the ambitious first sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, but the movie, which was geared more towards a mainstream audience with dialed down violence, underperformed off the back of a $100 million budget and an A-list cast that include Thandwie Newton, Judi Dench and Karl Urban.
Most assumed that was the end of the character, but Diesel had other ideas, striking up a deal with Universal that saw him regain the rights to the character in exchange for a cameo appearance in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. That appearance proved to be something of a blessing for Diesel too, with the actor eventually returning to the driving franchise where he made his name.
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From there he re-teamed with Twohy again for Riddick, a stripped-back sequel that shared more of the R-rated sensibilities of Pitch Black. Though it wasn’t as big a hit at the box office, steady DVD sales and positive word of mouth, coupled with a series of well-received games and animated movies, have helped get the franchise to a point where this latest entry is now hotly anticipated. Given everything they have learned from the franchise to date, fans are expecting another down-and-dirty affair full of the kind of violent thrills associated with the character.
It’s unclear as yet when fans can expect to see Riddick: Furya. Much could depend on Diesel’s work on Fast and Furious XI, which is being slated as the final entry in that franchise. Production on the high-octane sequel has already been pushed back to 2026.
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