I like Vin Diesel’s Riddick, but I’ll even admit that the last movie in the series, Riddick, left a sour taste in my mouth after the character’s testosterone-fueled exploits were deemed so awe-inspiring that he could somehow turn a gay woman straight. While the film was a blip at the box office, Diesel still gets a lot of leeway as long as he remains the face of the lucrative Fast & Furious franchise, and it looks like a fourth Riddick film is a serious possibility.
Diesel took to his Facebook page this week to announce that he and franchise director David Twohy will be aiming to film a new installment in early 2017 entitled Furia. As you may have guessed from the title, this will be an origin story for Richard B. Riddick, and while Diesel teased that this might require a “more expansive” mythology (read: higher budget necessitating a PG-13 rating like The Chronicles of Riddick), Twohy flatly states in this Facebook video, “It’ll be rated R.”:
The R-rating isn’t magical. I agree that’s what Riddick should have, but it also needs to move the character forward and find new relationships for him to care about. Riddick has to play against other characters who can hold their own against him in some regard. He may be the best killer on screen, but Diesel and Twohy have to do something other than conjure legions of lesser badasses.
And yet judging by the title, “Merc City”, they might fill an entire populace with these kind of stock characters. Universal Television sent out a press release announcing they’re developing a companion Riddick series with Diesel’s One Race Television production company. There are no details on what the plot of Merc City would entail, but it’s smart for Diesel to try and make his mark on the expanding television market rather than keep plugging away at movies, especially since it took almost a decade to get Riddick made after Chronicles of Riddick flopped. It will be interesting to see if Furia or Merc City ever get in front of cameras or if they’ll just remain part of Diesel’s excited imagination.
