April 03, 2003 - The Hollywood Reporter tips that two new cast members have joined Vin Diesel in his forthcoming sci-fi saga, The Chronicles of Riddick: Karl Urban, who played Eomer in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; and Thandie Newton (Mission: Impossible 2, The Truth About Charlie).  There's no word on what characters the pair are playing.

    Dame Judi Dench and actor Colm Feore (Chicago, Pearl Harbor, Face/Off) are also starring in the film for writer-director David Twohy.  Dench will play Aereon, an ethereal being who helps Riddick unearth his origins.  Feore portrays Lord Marshal, a warrior priest who is the leader of a sect that is waging the 10th and perhaps final crusade 500 years in the future.

    In the film, Riddick is a hunted man who finds himself caught between two factions in a massive crusade.

    Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) is penning the script for the film.  Riddick is set to get underway in Vancouver on June 9.

-- Brian Linder

    March 31, 2003 - Long before Vin Diesel was a box office sensation with xXx and just after The Fast and the Furious he shot a tidy little flick with F. Gary Gray called A Man Apart. In the movie, Diesel plays a character driven to extreme vengeance when his family is attacked by drug dealers. As he inserts himself into the drug underworld attempting to find the boss who ordered the hit that changed his life, he becomes a renegade cop.

    We recently caught up with Diesel at a press event for the film in Los Angeles where he chatted with us about The Chronicles of Riddick, A Man Apart, and elephants.

    Diesel came into the project right after The Fast and the Furious. He said, "I got a script from my agent, a script about a guy who's from the street who is working as a DEA agent and then ends up having an interesting relationship with the cartel that he took down. I thought that was fascinating, that very unlikely relationship. Through most of the second act, the cartel leader has become somewhat his confidante. I thought that that was interesting and I thought the idea of doing kind of an edgy, tragic love story was interesting."

    Diesel, who as of late has been flexing muscle onscreen, gets to flex some of his romantic side in A Man Apart. "Part of the reason why I did this movie was it was a very dark look at a romantic picture. Because, the love story exists throughout the movie, but in a painful, tragic sense. He loves his wife. Here's a guy - I wanted to play a character who had as good as a relationship could be, a semi-perfect relationship with his wife, a feel good relationship. I play a character that upholds that fidelity to his wife even after she's gone … This is something that was attractive because I was able to play this very dark, dark, dark energy, this character who loses his soul so to speak."

    Diesel discussed where his character's deep emotion came from. "I pulled from the idea of abandonment, which is a theme that I played with here. And I pulled from all that harbored anger we all have and lock away in a vault and keep it there locked so we can function. I just kind of unlocked that vault, which made for a very tough shooting experience because I was never that successful in leaving the character on set so to speak. It's a little bit harder for me, maybe because I'm dyslexic or I've got ADD or all those other wonderful things. It's hard for me to commit so much to a reality, the reality of a character then detach myself from that commitment on the off hours. So, what ends up happening is you live these three months in this reality, in this dark reality, you don't want to do those films every year because they're taxing. I started smoking a lot of cigarettes."

    Vin also shared how he usually gets into character. "It depends what kind of film I'm doing. If I'm doing a xXx, then I'm having a lot more fun. I get to be this grown up kid and in a kidlike way being rebellious and adventurous, being indifferent in the way that kids are, like who cares about what's going on in the world? So, the xXx experience was a lot more fun. I'm scared sh**less of what Hannibal will be. I'm already prepping all my friends and family, saying, 'There's going to be a time in the next 18 months when I go to shoot this Hannibal character. I'm going to do my best to channel the character, not even play the part, but literally channel it if that makes any sense on a spiritual level, channel this forgotten character, or all but forgotten character. I'm going to be channeling a lot of anger but different than the Sean Vetter anger or the anger that's associated to a cause, a greater cause, a cause of a whole civilizations."

    Diesel described his A Man Apart character, Sean Vetter, in greater detail. "Well, this character is as rebellious as you can get and still have a badge. He goes through that whole process of losing his badge and losing his place in a brotherhood that he felt so comfortable in. I grew up with all kinds of people. I grew up with people on both sides of the law, and I always thought it would be interesting to find a way to merge the two, find a way to get some of the guys that are on the wrong side of the law fighting for the right side, fighting for the cause and all the effort that goes into drug dealing, the idea of taking someone from that world, that speaks that language, and having him be a proponent for the fight against drugs. I hope that people - I'm pretty sure that Sean Vetter's pride in being a positive force in his neighborhood, he ultimately - the statement that he makes by being a cop is that he is from the street and wants to make that world that he's from a better place."

    Vin also discussed his next project, the sequel to 2000's Pitch Black. "I'm right about to go shoot The Chronicles of Riddick and there was a screen test yesterday. It was hours of them playing with my eyeballs, testing out these new contacts. The first time I did Pitch Black, we shot it in a place called Cooper Peety which is in the outback of Australia. It as a modest production, a $20 million production, and they got these contacts out there, and now this is in the boondocks, it's in the outback. Very dusty, there's dust in the air, and they put these contacts in my eyes. Now, I never wore contacts before. Next thing you know, I'm in the hospital and they're trying to take these contacts out. I'm like, 'Agghhh.' So, yesterday was like, for three days before, I was like, 'Oh, no, not the contacts.'"

    Diesel's looking forward to revisiting his Pitch Black character, Riddick. He said, "It's so much fun. It's really - I'll tell you. It's really cool to go back to Riddick and it's really cool to go back to Riddick when the studio's excited about doing it, making a trilogy out of that character. That's a really gratifyingly cool experience. We're going to go do this and we're going to create this huge universe. The studio's excited about doing their kind of futuristic Lord of the Rings, and I'm excited about exploring this character's purpose in this universe and what his whole deal is."

    Diesel is not resting on his laurels and spending his millions on loads of bling-bling. "Film is my hobby, so I will work well through the night to develop films, whatever film I'm doing or dream projects I have. I haven't changed much. Ten years ago, or less than ten years ago, six, seven, eight, nine years ago, I was staying up all night just writing either Multi-Facial or Strays. I was spending all day telemarketing on the phone to make the money to make these movies. I guess why I'm saying that is because before I was getting paid to make movies, when there was no money involved, then the financing of these movies had to come from a bouncer. I was either working to make the money for movies or trying to pull off the impossible and shoot a movie for $50,000 or $3,000. So, what I do for fun is film. Do I play ball, yeah. Do I love chess, yes. But it always feels like whatever I'm doing, I'd rather go back to somehow developing a project, whether it's creating creature characteristics and attributes for The Chronicles of Riddick that you won't see until scene two or scene three, whether it's researching on the Internet to explain negative matter where these villains in The Chronicles of Riddick come from, these Necromongers come from, and their scientific existence, explain that. I built a Hannibal tent in the back of my backyard. I go elephant training. I ride elephants. It's very odd."

    One may wonder where Vin would get elephants in Los Angeles. He explained, "There's a place, there's this wonderful guy, Chris Gallalucci or something who has the largest African elephant in America. It's two hours outside of L.A. I just go up there and practice riding this elephant. It's really bizarre because no one knows this, but elephants have killed more animal trainers than any other animal. It's just me and this one cat. I'm riding this elephant back and forth and I'm looking at this guy going, 'You can do nothing if he decides to flip over.' He's got his trunk all in my face. A beautiful experience. But even the hobbies somehow relate to the greater hobby, which is film. So, I love riding, I enjoy that, but it's also part of the Hannibal character which I won't shoot for another 12 months. Some long lead stuff.
-- Steven Horn

    June 06, 2002 - Writer-director David Twohy will return to the director's chair for the Vin Diesel sci-fi pic The Chronicles of Riddick, the sequel to his sleeper hit Pitch Black.  According to both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, Universal Pictures has made a deal with Twohy for the new film and more possible sequels.

    Twohy, who hadn't planned to return for the sequel, told the Variety, "I pitched an ambitious treatment for a sequel two years ago and they passed.  It was only after Lord of the Rings and the new Star Wars that the possibilities here grabbed us. Once we started running with it, everybody fell in love with what we were doing, even the studio. Is everybody planning for three? Yes, they are."

    Drafts of the screenplay for the sequel have been penned by David Hayter and Akiva Goldsman, but Variety reports that Universal will be going with Twohy's pitch.  Meanwhile, THR's sources say that Twohy is simply rewriting the Hayter and Goldsman material.

    Twohy has reportedly been going over the idea of developing the franchise with Diesel, and the number of sequels will depend on how successful The Chronicles of Riddick is at the box office – mainly because Vin's pricetag has gone up so much.  He explained some of their reasoning behind the franchise idea to Variety saying, "Vin wanted a franchise and when Fast and the Furious didn't happen for him, we pitched this to the studio and they went for the idea of not just one but up to three follow-ups. We'll give Riddick multiple adversaries on different levels. We think of Pitch Black like Mad Max was to Road Warrior, or The Hobbit was to Lord of the Rings. They were places to find one of your characters, enabling you to take them to different places in subsequent films."

    The Chronicles of Riddick is expected to start shooting by the end of the year.

-- Brian Linder