Third Riddick flick gets greenlight

It’s been a long time coming, but Variety have announced that a third Riddick film has been given the go-ahead.

Titular star Vin Diesel has always remained optimistic about returning to the Furyan role, made famous in the excellent cult hit Pitch Black and its less favoured sequel The Chronicles Of Riddick .

The latter’s lacklustre box office earnings meant Diesel seemed to be the only one looking for a third outing, despite the flick's closing cliffhanger. Chronicles was made for $105m, and grossed just $115m. Not catastrophic, but definitely a close run thing.

Six years and two successful video games later, Universal have given original writer-director David Twohy the go-ahead on a third Riddick adventure, which he has written and will direct.

Variety note that “insiders say the third outing will hew closer in tone to the cult hit Pitch Black and will focus on the character of Riddick as opposed to the universe he inhabits.”

Sounds good to us. The overly-ambitious scale of Chronicles never sat easy with us over here, but we’re fans of Black ’s small-scale stealth tactics.

The studio is apparently now attempting to sort out Diesel’s schedule to fit shooting of Riddick 3 in around Fast Five (the Fast And Furious sequel), so we could be seeing him tackling the role on the big screen as early as next year.

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