It has been 13 years since Vin Diesel returned to his sci-fi franchise and teamed up with a future co-star one year before they showed up together in the MCU. Diesel got his first big break thanks to Steven Spielberg and a role in Saving Private Ryan before moving on to take a voice role in The Iron Giant as the titular character. However, his career exploded after 2000. In 2000, Diesel starred in Pitch Black, a movie that started a three-movie franchise. In 2001, he starred in The Fast and the Furious, which started a franchise that has grown to 10 movies. Add in the MCU with the Guardians of the Galaxy and the spy series XXX, and Diesel has proven himself a success in different genres.
On September 6, 2013, Diesel starred in Riddick, the third movie in the Chronicles of Riddick film series, which started with Pitch Black (2000) and The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). Joining Diesel was a great supporting cast that included Katee Sackhoff, Karl Urban, and his future MCU co-star Dave Bautista.
Pitch Black is a 2000 sci-fi horror movie with Diesel starring as Richard B. Riddick, a prisoner who had eye surgery called a surgical shine job that gives him permanent night vision, although it makes him sensitive to normal light, requiring him to wear goggles most of the time. This came in handy in Pitch Black, when a ship he was on crashed onto a planet where monsters came out when the sun went down, sending the planet into pitch-black darkness. While The Chronicles of Riddick took things more into the mythology of Riddick’s people, Riddick took things back to what made Pitch Black successful.
Like the first movie, this sees a small group of people stranded on a dangerous planet, where they are hunted by alien creatures. This takes place five years after the previous movie, and Riddick refuses to swear into the Necromonger faith and offers a commander named Vaako (Urban) a deal to lead him to the Furya in exchange for Vaako replacing him as the new Lord Marshal of the Necromonger fleet. Vaako betrays Riddick, and when ships arrive after a beacon is sent for help, all the characters are set into place.
Joining Diesel are Matt Nable, a mercenary who wants revenge for his son’s death in Pitch Black (Cole Hauser’s William J. Johns), Jordi Mollà as a bounty hunter, Katee Sackhoff as a sniper, and Dave Bautista as a quiet and reserved lieutenant. The movie ended up as a financial success, making $98.3 million on a $38 million budget. While Riddick has a 58% Rotten Tomatoes score, it remains a fun sci-fi action horror movie that brings back everything that made Pitch Black great.
It was also a chance for Diesel and Bautista to work together, one year before they joined forces again in the MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Of course, Bautista played Drax the Destroyer, and Diesel voiced Groot.
With the success of Riddick at the box office, it seems curious that the fourth movie that Diesel wanted to make has yet to see the light of day. David Twohy, who directed all three movies in the series, and Diesel are both ready to return, but Riddick: Furya has yet to be made. Diesel began talking about the fourth movie in the series in 2014, just one year after Riddick hit theaters, claiming that big home video sales made it worth the release.
Of course, Diesel loves to talk about things, and many times, it turns out that nothing is actively being done. The last Fast & Furious movie is still being delayed, and Diesel keeps talking about it being in the works, although production still hasn’t started yet. He has done the same with the Riddick franchise, speaking out again in 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2023. By that last year, Deadline reported the official announcement of the movie, with the news that Twohy and Diesel were both returning. This film will reportedly have Riddick finally return to his home world, where he finds his people, the Furyans, fighting for their existence against a new enemy.
It remains to be seen when this movie will be released, or if it will ever get made, since it has been over three years since that announcement. Diesel has released images from behind the scenes of the movie, but no cast has been announced, and there has been no news about the movie other than from Diesel’s social media accounts. Fast Forever is supposed to come out in 2028, and that still isn’t guaranteed. Vin Diesel has also teased a return to the MCU as the voice of Groot, but once again, that is still just the actor talking.
