Vin Diesel Talks About ‘Riddick’ Sequel

Vin Diesel promised at least two more “Chronicles of Riddick” sequels, taking his sci-fi action hero into the depths of the Underverse and beyond. Diesel, whose new film “Fast & Furious” hits theaters this week, chose his words carefully, but he hinted at some epic fight scenes to come in the third Riddick installment.

“There will be long scenes and long portions, full acts of just Riddick against the beasts — or creatures — isolated, which will be very compelling,” Diesel told MTV News. “How that’s interwoven with the mythology set forth in ‘Chronicles of Riddick’ is what we’re waiting for from David Twowy, who’s almost done with the script.”

The series, which began in 2000 with “Pitch Black” last sent Diesel’s character Richard B. Riddick to theaters in 2004 in “The Chronicles of Riddick,” when the shiny-eyed hero took the throne of the Necromonger King. Though it received a lukewarm reception in the U.S., the film performed well overseas and ignited a successful video game series.

“It’s a ‘Chronicles of Riddick’ story told in the ‘Pitch Black’ fashion,” Diesel promised for the new sequel. Twowy scripted both previous Riddick movies, as well as the the video game “The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury,” so there should be plenty of continuity in the story’s vision. Where that vision continues to go, however, will remain to be seen when Diesel plugs in his creepy contact lenses once again.

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Twilight Sequel: New Details on ‘New Moon’

Summit Entertainment has tentatively slated Nov. 20, 2009, as the release date for New Moon, the Twilight sequel, which means any director who signs on to replace Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke has to be in Vancouver by Dec. 15 to begin 12 weeks of preproduction before a mid-March start date. Reports have speculated that Hardwicke was fired for being difficult on set, but sources close to her suggest Summit’s aggressive production schedule turned her off. “She’d love to do the sequel if she could do it better than Twilight,” says one. “It ­became clear that Summit didn’t have those same priorities.”

Indeed, at press time the second movie appeared to have ­little more than a rough first-draft working script. As Summit’s production president Erik Feig told EW during Twilight’s ­record-busting first weekend, “There is that first…script. All the finesse that turns a screenplay into a movie hasn’t ­happened yet.” Two weeks later, Summit is saying it’s happy with screenwriter ­Melissa Rosenberg’s progress.

Another of Hardwicke’s primary concerns was that hunky vampire Edward remains MIA throughout New Moon’s middle portion. In her own opening-weekend interview, she told EW, “You have to get the chemistry as strong ­between Jacob and Bella as it was between Bella and Edward. You also have to do ­some­thing with that arc: She’s in love with somebody, he disappears, she falls in love with someone else, and the first guy comes back. Movies like Pearl Harbor have tried it. It absolutely didn’t work.”

With or without Hardwicke, Summit ­faces other snags. Two sources tell EW the studio doesn’t want to rehire baby-faced Taylor Lautner (pictured) as Jacob, though Lautner’s agent has apparently reached out to the ­imaging company behind The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in an attempt to demonstrate to Summit how a digitally bulked-up Lautner could work. (Summit says it won’t make a decision until a new filmmaker is on board.) There’s also the matter of finding a cast of Native American actors to play Jacob’s werewolf clan — a difficult challenge Hardwicke was also faced with before ­settling on Lautner, who isn’t completely ­Native American. And with a slightly increased budget of $50 million — much of which is ­assumed will go to leads asking for heftier paydays, location shoots in Italy, and ramped-up F/X — Summit will have to scrimp somewhere. Read more