Vin Diesel's fourth Riddick movie Riddick: Furya to begin filming this August

Before he was crime boss Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious franchise or the voice of Groot in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, actor Vin Diesel's career was kickstarted by a scrappy low budget sci-fi movie called Pitch Black. Diesel's character Richard B. Riddick wasn't the obvious, immediate lead of the film; rather, it was a monster slasher movie in the vein of Alien, where the cast was brutally whittled down one by one until only Riddick remained.

Since then, Riddick has become one of the cornerstone characters of Diesel's career. To date there have been three live-action Riddick movies and an animated film, each one homing in more and more on the titular interstellar fugitive turned hero: Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004) and a 2013 sequel simply titled Riddick. Maybe it's his ability to bond with scary space animals, maybe it's his cool silver eyes that let him see in the dark, or maybe it's just Diesel's pure charisma: whatever the reason, the actor keeps coming back to the character, and audiences do too.

To wit, Variety reports that a fourth live-action Riddick movie will finally enter production this summer, more than a decade after the last installment. Riddick: Furya is due to begin production in August. David Twohy, the writer and director of the first three Riddick movies, will return for Riddick: Furya as well.

Here's what Variety has to say about the actual plot of Riddick: Furya: "In Riddick: Furya, Riddick finally returns to his homeworld, a place he barely remembers and one he fears might be left in ruins. But there, he finds other Furyans fighting for their existence against a new monster — and some of these Furyans are more like Riddick than he could have ever imagined."

What sort of movie will Riddick: Furya be?

Obviously, this is good news for any fans of Richard B. Riddick out there. Diesel is always fun in the role, and the movies give him plenty of opportunities to shine. But it is also a series with ups, downs, and interesting course corrections. The first movie was very much a creature horror film, and even today it holds up. The second, The Chronicles of Riddick, was much more of a grand space opera that took Riddick from a relatively contained criminal on the run and tried to build him into a space messiah. That movie was widely panned, enough so that when Diesel and Twohy came back for 2013's Riddick, the movie was much more in the vein of the original Pitch Black film, with Riddick stranded on a planet along with mercenaries and bloodthirsty creatures. That one was much better received than Chronicles.

It begs the question: what sort of Riddick movie will Riddick: Furya be? Furya is the homeworld of Riddick that was introduced in Chronicles, and was basically built up to be a world of extremely powerful space warriors that were seemingly wiped out by their enemies. As of this writing, we've never actually seen the Furyan homeworld. The idea of Riddick going there is exciting — so long as the movie doesn't forget how well some sort of bloody thriller element worked for the first and third movies. I'm hoping this one can strike a balance between Chronicles and the other two live-action films.

Riddick: Furya will begin production this August, filming in Germany, the UK and Spain. Diesel is set to produce as well as star in the movie. Judging by his Instagram, he's already hard at work training to take down alien monsters once more as Richard B. Riddick.

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