Riddick Comic-Con Panel Serves Up Vin Diesel Being Tough And Katee Sackhoff In A Tank Top
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Yesterday we got our first look at the badass, head chopping new red band trailer for Vin Diesel and David Twohy’s Riddick. You should watch it, it’s a damn fine time; he kicks a machete through a guy’s head. The film also hosted its very own panel at San Diego Comic-Con, and while we weren’t able to be there ourselves, we’re Internet bros with Cinema Blend, and they’ve been all over the Southern California fun like white on rice, including the Riddick panel.
Twohy, the director of all three films in the trilogy, is the first to arrive on stage, and says that 13 years ago he stood up at Comic-Con with a little movie called Pitch Black, starring some unknown beefy dude named Vin Diesel, and that he couldn’t have dreamed all of this was possible. It’s nice to see that sort of enthusiasm from a filmmaker. He damn well better be excited, though, after everything that he and Diesel went through to get the film made. After the sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, tanked, it took some doing, and several false starts, to produce the movie.
Next up is Katee Sackhoff, and a video of her character, a bounty hunter named Dahl. The footage features lots of guns, punching, and Sackhoff looking tough while wearing a tank top. Hard to go wrong with that combination.
Diesel follows, also introduced by footage. Though it sounds similar to what we’ve seen before, it also sounds like a damn good time. There are lots of glowing eyes, tough fights, and freaky monsters. When Diesel walks out, he and Twohy talk about how they developed the film together, bouncing ideas off of one another until they ultimately decided on a survival story. They wrote the script on spec, sold it overseas, and finally got Universal to pick up distribution rights in the U.S. Told you they went through a lot to make this movie. Everyone talks about how loyal and devoted sci-fi fans are, and how Sackhoff was the only woman in what was otherwise a boy’s club of a production. So much testosterone.
Diesel proceeds to make a lot of very nerdy people very happy when he starts talking about his love of Dungeons & Dragons, calling the role playing game a “training ground for imagination.” Seriously, nerds, a guy like Diesel is a good get. It wasn’t even a carry over from childhood, he’d already started acting and being huge when he started going on quests and adventures.
Twohy and Diesel also reconfirm that Riddick is more in line with Pitch Black than with Chronicles, in tone and tempo as well as style and level of violence. While they both liked the idea of expanding the scope and the world building in the sequel, the $200 million budget necessitated toning the subject matter down to the PG-13 realm to snare as wide an audience as possible. In this latest film, they seek to combine the original feel, and R-rating, while still building on the mythology of the Riddick universe.
Then they debuted the new trailer. You can read in depth about that HERE and watch it down below. Diesel talks about the physical versus emotional component of acting, Sackhoff probes Dahl some more, and a fan asks Diesel how he, the fan, can be more badass. If anyone would know…
Overall this sounds like a pretty good time. There were some laughs, some serious discussion of craft, and, at the end, Diesel dropped a nugget that has fanboys tenting their fingers in anticipation. He said there is some big news about him and Marvel coming at the end of the month. What that is, we’ll have to wait and see, and we’ll also have to contain ourselves until September 6 to finally see Riddick in IMAX.
