“Question: Do you feel like you’ve done Riddick now and
can move on, or are you even hungrier now to do more Riddick films and more
sci-fi films?
DIESEL: I would love to do more science
fiction. We have another project at
Universal, called Soldiers of the Sun, that’s very interesting and is an
opportunity to go into that genre.
That’s a very good question because I’ve been thinking about that
lately. The reality is that I always
envisioned the Riddick franchise as a continuing mythology, so I always
imagined that there would be many other films to follow. And yet, I do feel like I answered that
growing request from the fans that said, “Please make another Riddick.” It was one of the three promises that I
either made, or people assumed that I made, on the social media network. One of them, obviously, was the return of
Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). That was
something everyone was so vocal about, four and a half years ago. The second was the resurrection of Riddick,
and reawakening that mythology. And
then, of course, the third one was Hannibal the Conqueror, which is the one
promise I haven’t delivered on yet, but I will.
Now
that I have kids, it’s a little bit trickier to watch Riddick. We were initially going to try to make
Riddick before I did Fast 5, and then I learned that we were expecting a
child. I didn’t think it would be fair
to the child and I didn’t think it would be fair to the fans to go to that dark
place while welcoming a life into the world, so Riddick waited until after I
did the more family-centric Fast 5. If
you remember, in Fast 5, the idea of pregnancy was very present in the Brian
(Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) relationship, which played to the fact
that my son was being born while we were making that movie. So, I couldn’t play the Riddick character and
go to that dark place. It’s very
rewarding to see the movie, and it’s very rewarding to make the movie, but
playing the character is sometimes a lot more difficult than other characters
because it takes so much preparation to get into that character. For this version, with where Riddick is now
in this movie, and his state of mind in this movie, I went to the woods for
four months and prepared by basically being a recluse. I prepared the inner core of the
character. Because I was also producing
it, it was so important to get that core character correct, so that I could
easily tap into it while maintaining some kind of circumspect view of what was
going on with the production, as a producer.
How
difficult is it for you to be the boss of your co-stars, and balance being
actor and producer?
DIESEL: I try to create an environment where, when we
step onto the set, we’re all in character.
A funny thing we used to say while we were playing Dungeons &
Dragons, when someone would say something random like, “I’m tired, so I might
just take a nap,” the DM would say, “Everything that you say is in game,” which
is a similar approach to the way we approached making this movie. When you come onto the set, everything should
be focused around your character and you should stay in the pocket, as much as
possible. Every actor has their own
process. For me, I really need to stay
in the pocket. So, if I’m on set and I’m
in character, I’m not thinking like a producer.
If I’m on set and I’m not in character, wardrobe and make-up, and I’m
just coming on set for the moments that I’m not shooting, then I’m able to be
the producer. This was tricky because it
wasn’t like being the producer of Fast & Furious. This was being the producer of something
that, if it didn’t work, I would have lost my house. Everything that I had on my life was
leveraged to make this movie. So, the
stakes were higher than for any producer I know because the skin in the game
was real. I was so committed to
answering this growing request from the social media fans to continue this
character, and the only way that I could pull it off was by leveraging
everything.
Since
this was an independent production this time, is this the story you always
envisioned to follow The Chronicles of Riddick?
DIESEL: It isn’t the story that I had always
envisioned to follow the last chapter of Riddick. Part of what I’ve been trying to do at the
studio, and have been very successful with, as you’ve seen with the Fast
franchise, is to create movies while simultaneously thinking about the
succeeding chapters, and how they would all interlink and each film would speak
to one another. That felt like the
challenge of our millennium. In the old
millennium, when we made sequels and franchise movies, we just put the brand up
there and slapped something together. We
didn’t expect the property to grow, we expected the property to fizzle
out. It was exploiting a brand. That’s why I turned down all those the
sequels to all those films. I didn’t feel
like they were approaching it with that level of respect to an overall
chronological story.
When
we were doing The Chronicles of Riddick, back in 2003, David [Twohy] and I put
together three leather binder, and each leather binder had a lock. They were those binders that you could
lock. And we gave them to the head of
the studio with one key. On the first
binder, it said Core I, the second binder said Core II and the third binder
said Core III. At that production level,
the amount of money that we were spending at that point, we were thinking of
going directly to the Underverse for Core II, and then to Furya for Core
III. When years and years started to go
by and we weren’t delivering the next chapter, we had to make a very conscious
decision to find a way to tell the next chapter, continue the story and
continue the mythology, even if it meant we weren’t going to get the size
budget we had just had on The Chronicles of Riddick.
Luckily
for us, there was an outcry from social media to make this one rated R, which
did two things. It ruled out all
possibilities of a studio backing it. As
you know, rated R movies are few and far between, nowadays. We’re all seeing less and less rated R
movies, and less and less of them are being made. We had to take a more independent route, so I
went to Europe, to a film market, and presented what this film was going to be,
and got foreign money to start this movie and to be the bulk of the financing
for the movie. And then, it was up to us
to take that somewhat limited means, especially in comparison to where we were
on Chronicles, and tell a story with those limited means. Thank god, the audience wanted it rated R
because that justified, in some ways, taking a more independent route.
DIESEL: First of all, David Bautista came in and was
just great. I remember when he was
auditioning, I immediately saw something.
I immediately saw some potential.
I had just worked with Dwayne Johnson on Fast 5, so I believed you could
take somebody from the wrestling world and coach them into some really great
performances. I was confident about
that. The fight sequence between me and
Bautista was different, in some ways. It
took the same level of choreography, but the fight sequence in Fast 5 took us a
week to shoot. Dwayne, and anyone, will
tell you that it was one of the most rigorous scenes we’d ever shot because it
wasn’t just the physical component.
There was an emotional component that was a part of that fight sequence
that added an extra level of difficulty and intensity to it. The fight between me and Bautista was fun,
but it wasn’t supposed to be a huge set piece in the way that the Dom-Hobbs
fight was.
At
the very introduction of Hobbs, you’re really waiting for the Hobbs-Dom
showdown. This was done a little bit
differently because we were still focusing on the Johns (Matt Nable) and Dahl
(Katee Sackhoff) characters, and all the characters who are part of the
mercs. But, I remember that day. I got spoiled on Fast 5. I started to get self-conscious about fight
sequences because, invariably, the other person would get hurt, and you never
want anyone to be hurt on a film, let alone you being responsible. The great thing about working with these guys
who have spent their lives choreographing fights for wrestling is that that’s
their specialty. Their specialty is
selling taking hits. Their specialty is
selling explosive hits without really making a contact, or really doing too much
damage. So, I was able to exploit that
for the Fast 5 fight, as well as with David Bautista. He’s the only character in Riddick that our
protagonist fights to that degree, in part because he was conditioned to do
that. He was such a great choice to have
that fight sequence with.
David
Twohy says that he wants to do two more Riddick films. Do you want to do two more?
DIESEL: Tell David to give me the goddamn script for
the next one, right now. He’s late! I was expecting it yesterday.
Steven
Spielberg and George Lucas recently made some comments predicting that the film
industry is going to implode and that only blockbuster franchise movies will
get made while ticket prices will go up.
As someone who stars in and produces those types of movies, what are your
thoughts on their statements?
DIESEL: Not on my watch! It won’t implode while I’m around, I promise
you that. I’d love to talk to them. We should get Lucas and Spielberg over here and
really talk it out, face-to-face and mano-a-mano. I love Steven, and I’m a huge fan of George
Lucas. At the risk of sounding naive, I
don’t see that in the immediate future.
How
do you envision the future of film?
DIESEL: I envision the future sunny and with love,
harmony and oneness. I think Hollywood
is changing. I don’t know when the last
time was that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas made a movie with Universal, but
I can tell you that Universal is leading the charge. They’re looking at film differently. They’re planning ahead in a way that I’ve
never seen a studio do before. They’re
believing in a relationship between fan and film franchise, in a new way. They’re more receptive to an audience, in
part because of social media, in a way we’ve never been allowed and in a way
that Steven never could have imagined.
When Lucas was doing Star Wars, he didn’t have a 50 million person
Facebook following where he could just sift through feedback to try to get an
idea for what he was going to do next.
It’s a luxury we have today, and it’s really cool to see Universal be leading
the charge by listening. The thought of
listening to an audience was unheard of, five years ago. Movies were that thing where you went and
bought a ticket, and you never got to talk to the person that made it, and you
never got to talk to the creator or the producer of those films. You bought the ticket, shut up and sat down,
and you could never comment about it or have a relationship with it. If Clark Gable had a Facebook page, there
would have been a Gone with the Wind 2.”
Riddick
opens in theaters on September 6th.
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