If Vin Diesel attaches himself to a project, you can bet your ass that cinema’s number one proponent of family will have his eyes on a franchise. The chrome-domed action star is no stranger to sequels, spinoffs and multimedia properties, and it’s an approach that’s served him incredibly well over the last two decades.
He might be best known as Fast & Furious figurehead Dominic Toretto, but you get the distinct impression that he might have preferred Riddick to go down as his career-defining role. He may have only played the character in three films dating back 21 years and counting, but at no stage has he ever given up on bringing the intergalactic convict back for more.
As he’s been telling us for what feels like forever, a fourth Riddick remains in active development, but we’re hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us Disney wanted a Free Guy sequel long before Ryan Reynolds confirmed it – that Diesel is aiming even higher than that, with an entire shared universe on his mind.
Of course, you could make the argument that one already exists, given that Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick and Riddick have been complemented by numerous spinoffs. Animated film Dark Fury, mobile game The Merc Files and console favorites Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena cover most bases, and two separate TV shows have been announced by Diesel and David Twohy, although neither of them amounted to anything.
Given the slow crawl that Riddick: Furya has been making towards actually getting into production, it’d probably be best for the leading man to focus on getting that project out of the gate before biting off more than he can chew.