Is the Riddick Franchise Still Alive?

It looks like there might be more Riddick flicks in the works after all. The Vin Diesel action-sci-fi series, first started with Pitch Black in 2000 and followed by The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004, is apparently still cooking as Diesel recently told MTV that two new Riddick movies are in the works.

“David Twowy right now is writing the scripts. The only question is whether we take a page from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ guys and try to shoot the two chapters at the same time. There are two more in mind, The Chronicles of Riddick’ was presented as a three part trilogy that would answer ‘Pitch Black’ in the same way that ‘Lord of the Rings’ answered ‘The Hobbit.’”

Pitch Black was a cool little sci-fi flick, and Diesel was pretty good as the anti-hero Riddick, but all the charm of Black was lost with The Chronicles of Riddick. So if these two new movies are going to be more like Chronicles and less like Black you can count me out. It also didn’t help that Chronicles was stripped down for a PG-13 rating.

It should be noted that these flicks probably depend on how well the upcoming Babylon A.D. and next summer’s Fast and Furious do at the box-office. Diesel has to prove if he’s still an action hero worthy of audience’s time.

The series also spawned an animated DVD movie and a pretty kick-ass video game for Xbox.