Vin Diesel's Big Sci-Fi Box Office Flop Somehow Got A Star-Studded Sequel

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Vin Diesel has been working consistently in Hollywood for the entirety of the 2000s. He's primarily known to the world as Dom Toretto from the "Fast & Furious" franchise. Before he was living life a quarter mile at a time, though, he starred as Riddick in "Pitch Black," a role he was nearly robbed of but which went on to be a defining character of his career. That movie was a modest hit; its big-budget sci-fi sequel was nothing shy of a big flop. And yet, somehow, the franchise continued with another installment.

"Pitch Black" was at best a modest success, pulling in $53 million worldwide on a $23 million budget. Director David Twohy got the green light for his much more ambitious sequel, "The Chronicles of Riddick," because Universal Pictures was hoping to capitalize on the audience that was clearly there for grand cinematic epics like "Lord of the Rings" and the "Star Wars" prequels in the early 2000s.

The movie centers on escaped convict Riddick (Diesel), who has bounty hunters on his tail. Aereon (Judi Dench), the ambassador from the Elemental race, informs him of a warrior army known as the Necromongers annihilating all human life in the galaxy. She urges Riddick into battle against them, believing he is the one man who can defeat the Necromongers and their evil leader, Lord Marshal (Colm Feore).

Twohy and Diesel's epic sequel cost anywhere between $105 and $120 million to produce, which doesn't account for marketing. A couple of years earlier, "Attack of the Clones" had set a low bar for "Star Wars" at the box office with $656 million worldwide. It was still a financial success, though and Universal hoped that, with a blockbuster budget, Riddick could capture a portion of that audience.

That's not how things panned out. "The Chronicles of Riddick" hit theaters on the weekend of June 11, 2004. It did so against largely negative reviews. The movie holds a 29% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That certainly didn't help matters, nor did the stiff competition it was going up against in theaters. On its opening weekend, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" topped the charts with $34.9 million in its second frame. "Riddick" had to settle for second place with $24.2 million, barely above the $23.2 million made by "Shrek 2," which was in the middle of its mold-breaking box office run.

Things went from bad to worse as Vin Diesel's space epic cratered in the following weeks, getting little help from overseas markets where movies such as this have historically overperformed under the right circumstances. "Warcraft" became the most successful video game movie of all time, for a time, making nearly 90% of its money outside of the U.S.

In the end, "The Chronicles of Riddick" finished its run with just $115.9 million worldwide. After theaters took their cut of the ticket sales, that failed to even cover the production budget. Bomb Report estimated the losses to be in the $50 million range, but they may well have been greater once marketing expenses were factored in. Ultimately, the sequel was too expensive for its own good. Universal took a modest sci-fi/horror hit and trying to turn it into something bigger than it actually was.

In almost every other case in Hollywood history, this franchise would have been left to die after a failure of that size. However, Vin Diesel and David Twohy still believed it had potential. Universal disagreed, but after much back and forth, a brief appearance in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" earned Diesel the rights to make a new "Riddick" movie. Universal wanted him to cameo in "Tokyo Drift," and he used that leverage to negotiate the rights to a franchise they weren't doing anything with anyway.

The result was 2013's "Riddick," a mid-budget affair made for just shy of $40 million, which took the franchise back to its smaller, sci-fi roots. It sees Riddick fighting for survival against alien predators and mercenaries on a sun-scorched planet. The star-studded supporting cast included the likes of Dave Bautista ("Guardians of the Galaxy"), Katee Sackhoff ("Battlestar Galactica"), and Karl Urban ("The Lord of the Rings"), among others.

Though not exactly a critical darling, "Riddick" became a box office success, pulling in $98 million worldwide. Diesel refused to let his passion project die, and it paid off. So much so that he and Twohy are planning a new sequel titled "Riddick: Furya," with Diesel once again playing the title character.

It's truly a remarkable story and arguably one of the least likely franchise turnarounds in mainstream Hollywood history. But it's important to recognize that success only came once Diesel and Twohy scaled things back and more closely mirrored what made "Pitch Black" successful in the first place.

You can grab "Riddick: The Complete Collection" on Blu-ray from Amazon.