Next month, we'll be reaching the two year anniversary of the day when Vin Diesel took to Instagram to celebrate the fact that writer/director David Twohy had sent him act 1 of the screenplay for Riddick 4: Furya. We've already passed the one year anniversary of Diesel saying that he would soon be receiving the full script. So if Twohy has been working on the script for more than two years now, what is the status of this project? Thankfully, Diesel has let the folks over at GamesRadar+ know that he's confident the start of production is getting closer.
Confirming that he has read the finished script, Diesel said,
David Twohy, he wrote a great script. It's just a matter of timing when we get that opportunity to shoot that. But I believe we're shooting that in Australia. And it would be the fourth chapter in that series, which would be awesome."
Riddick 4: Furya would be a continuation of the sci-fi action franchise that began with the creature feature Pitch Black. That was followed by the epic The Chronicles of Riddick, which underperformed at the box office, so they reduced the scope for the third film, Riddick. The franchise also includes an animated short called The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury and two video games, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.
When asked whether or not there will ever be a third game, Diesel said,
We did have great success with Escape From Butcher Bay. It feels like an eternity ago now. But, I imagine that we would take advantage of the gaming space and add an extra chapter, but definitely, the [movie's] script is already written. So it's safe to say that we are moving towards filming the fourth chapter of Riddick."
We don't know, and Diesel apparently doesn't know, when Riddick 4 might start filming, but at least it's not dead.
On the cover page of the script, Twohy included the tagline:
Everyone wants to be a beast, until it's time to do what real beasts do.