The Chronicles of Riddick 3 back in production!

Buried deep within all the posts that have been written for Matte Havoc there is a blurb or two that clearly states that I am a fan of the Riddick franchise. If you are unfamiliar with the character name, then you might want to head over to the nearest movie rental facility to check out a copy of Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), or The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004). The third title, Dark Fury, is direct to video animated film that serves as a bridge in the stories between Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. It does not really count as a third installment of sorts, but more like a half sibling or a Cliff Notes movie that exists as a method to help explain the continuity of the Riddick universe. Over the last couple of years, but prominently for the last year alone, actor Vin Diesel and movie director David Twohy have been publicly vocal about the promises of creating and distributing an official third installment to the series, which has left me a bit excited to see it come to fruition.

Back in September there was an intentional leak of concept art for the third movie, which includes the Riddick drawing at the top of this posted article. For the last couple of months I assumed Vin Diesel and Twohy were still working in the pre-production phase for the movie by working on the production design and the script. However, I was unaware they had actually started the production process. In the last week there was news of the production being temporarily shut down as a result of running out of funding. This was the first piece of information that I heard in regards to the crew actually start shooting the movie. It was a bittersweet announcement, because they actually began the process of creating the movie, but had to shut down when the money ran out. It was just another hurdle to slow down the process of filmmaking.

Jumping ahead by a couple of days to the new announcement that the production has found a new source of funding and will resume the filming the movie immediately. Hurray! A placeholder page has already been created on the IMDb website for the move, but the release date is still up in the air. I would not be surprised if the final cut does not arrive in the movie theaters until sometime in 2013, because I would imagine there will have to be a lot of computer generated effects to be created for the final cut. Well, I am looking forward to watching the movie whenever it might be release to the public.