New Updates on Next 'Riddick' Movie

ShockTillYouDrop got a chance to sit down with "Pitch Black"/"Chronicles of Riddick" writer, David Twohy, who gave an update on the status of the "third Riddick" movie. The writer/director of the upcoming "A Perfect Getaway" confirmed that he and star Vin Diesel are currently in the midst of discussions of how to bring the character back for a third movie, including a very welcome detail that they are aiming for an R-Rated movie again.

Twohy co-wrote and directed "Pitch" Black back in 2000, before going on four years later to solely write and direct its sequel, "The Chronicles of Riddick." "Pitch Black" was rated R and delivered a pretty hardcore sci-fi action/horror movie that still holds up today. Its sequel was brought down to a PG-13 rating, and even Twohy himself agrees that was a mistake for the series.

"I've sketched out two ideas for the next installment," Twohy explained. "Vin and I have decided on one approach of those two, and there's some interest at the studio level but it would be as a PG-13 film, and we don't want to do that anymore. That's one of the concessions we thought we made with 'Riddick' that we shouldn't have made. We also spent too much money and we were too ambitions, so yes, if we do go back to a third one, it will be focused again, hopefully again the same way that 'Pitch Black' was, and we'll spend less money doing it. We're just trying to figure out how much less we can do it for, because I don't think Vin is going to work for scale again."

"The third movie would be more modestly-scaled and it would probably feel more like 'Pitch Black' then 'Chronicles'," he continued. "It will always be Riddick-centric. If the question is whether it will be more like the first one than the second one, the difference is that yeah, you can sell it on its creatures and say 'This is a creature fest and we're going to go out as us vs. the creatures' but that's like a lot of different movies. However, the hallmark of a good movie, and I think 'Pitch Black' is a good movie, is that even if you took the creatures out of the picture, you'd still have some pretty interesting character dynamics going on within that group, and it's almost like you can tell the same story without the creature or substitute some other external pressure on the group, because there were internal pressures as well that were interesting. So was it really a creature feature? It had the hallmarks of it, the trappings of a creature movie, but it also had pretty good characters."

Personally, I would be extremely interested in seeing the Riddick series return to its R-Rated roots. "Pitch Black" is still a very effective and legitimately atmospheric sci-fi action/horror, and I was sad to see the series movie away from that to the action adventure style that "The Chronicles of Riddick" had. It really sounds like Twohy (and Diesel) are passionate about the Riddick character - the franchise is in motivated hands, at least.

Although no filming or release date has been set as of yet for Riddick 3, Twohy hinted at a possible production date of early 2010.

More news to come! Catch ya' later!
Sources: ShockTilYouDrop, Screen Rant, First Showing