USA TODAY International Edition
‘ Riddick’ made for fans
Vin Diesel, director moved by pleas for follow- up to “Chronicles”
When you get Vin Diesel laughing — not just a chuckle, but real, full- on guffaws — there is a giggle that belies the actor’s deep voice and actionmovie machismo.
Katee Sackhoff, his co- star in the sci- fi fantasy Riddick ( out Friday), can attest to the Diesel giggle, and it’s just as infectious as the love he — and his loyal fan base — have for cosmic convict Richard Riddick.
Diesel is “one of the most selfaware people I’ve ever met,” Sackhoff says. “It takes a very, very strong, confident man to embrace life so much and to giggle at moments.”
Riddick is the third movie in the series that originated with Pitch Black ( 2000) and continued in The
Chronicles of Riddick ( 2004). The title anti- hero is again fighting for his survival, this time on an alien planet. He has been left for dead by the fanatical Necromongers and faces monsters and two separate teams of bounty hunters — including the female warrior Dahl ( Sackhoff ) — who are after his goggle- clad head. “I’ve spent decades playing Dun
geons & Dragons, so I’m really fantasy- based and I always dig mythology,” Diesel says. But unlike his popular Fast & Furious series, “the wonderful thing about Riddick is that it’s a cult franchise at its heart.”
Writer/ director David Twohy has been Diesel’s partner in all things Riddick since Pitch Black, when Diesel “was just the best available actor” and not a well- muscled megastar. Now, he’s also a producer on
Riddick and has taken part ownership in the series alongside Twohy.
“You can sum it up by saying we are co- conspirators,” the director says, “and we pulled off what feels like the crime of the century by getting this franchise back on its feet.”
The Fast movies have been boxoffice gold for Diesel, but the Riddick films haven’t been exactly furious financially. Pitch Black cost $ 23 million and grossed $ 39.2 million. But
Chronicles, its $ 105 million follow- up, could recoup only $ 57 million.
Twohy says the independently financed Riddick was made at a greatly reduced budget of $ 35 million to $ 40 million. And they struggled just to get the cameras rolling: The movie was supposed to film at the end of 2011, but after a few months of preproduction in Montreal, the project was shut down because legal paperwork was not filled out correctly. That led to Twohy and Diesel not being able to pay the bills.
“Here we were, being locked out of our facilities and losing our stage space and trying to get our laptops back from the owner of the studio, who wanted last month’s rent. That’s a horrible way to start a movie,” says Twohy, who straightened everything out and started production the next spring.
Riddick was made mainly to pla- cate fans who kept asking for a follow- up to Chronicles, Twohy says.
“I get the e- mails that say basically, ‘ You just can’t leave it there.’ They’d say, ‘ Look, it doesn’t have to be a $ 100 million extravaganza. Just do something smaller if that’s all you have. We just want to see Riddick back in action, doing Riddickian things.’ ”
Fan reaction powered Diesel, too. “I’d have people on Facebook send me notes: ‘ Hey, Vin, I’ll send you $ 10 right now if it helps you get the movie made,’ ” he says. “Those kind of sentiments make you want to make the impossible a reality.”