Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

Nice work, guys. David Twohy’s got the groovy underwater ghost story BELOW coming out this weekend on a couple of hundred screens. He’s still barely being supported by Dimension, despite their limp TV campaign.

No matter how anemic the reaction to this film, though, and no matter how undeserved a death Miramax has condemned it to, Twohy’s already looking ahead, and I think he’s gearing up to do something that we should all pay close attention to. If he finally delivers on the promise of his genre work so far and makes something epic and original, we could be in for something really special.

And any news right now is good news, I say:

Hey all:

If interested, our recent interview with director David Twohy provided some insight into the production of the PITCH BLACK sequel, THE RIDDICK CHRONICLES:

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE STORY!!

Here are the basic passages on that:

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How far along are you with the RIDDICK CHRONICLES?

We’re in pre-production. The script is finished and I’ve got my production designer on it. Right now we’re calling the series the CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK. We’re referring to them now as “C-1,” “C-2” and “C-3.” I’m plotting all three films as we pre-produce this first film. The reason why it’s “Chronicles” and not “Pitch Black 2” is because that would give a false impression of this next film, because not only are we changing genres – the first one was a horror film and this one will be action/adventure/sci-fi – but we’re also increasing the scope in such a way that isn’t true to the original film as well.

Are you planning to shoot “C-2” and “C-3” simultaneously?

If the first one justifies any follow-ups at all, then yeah, we’re thinking of doing 2 and 3 together.

Can you give us a peek at what THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK will be about?

All I can say is that it takes that Riddick character and follows him through multiple worlds as he meets multiple adversaries. There’s a lot of theology in it. Even though I’m not a religious guy, I am very interested in religion and why people turn to it. In BELOW I’m interested in why people turn to supernatural explanations when there are more plausible ones. I’m not a great believer in the supernatural either, but I find it fascinating when people turn to it.

You shot PITCH BLACK in Australia. Are you planning to shoot CHRONICLES there, too?

No. We would have gone back, but stage space was a little tight there. So we booked Vancouver and sucked up all of their available stage space, only to find out that Darren’s new film, THE FOUNTAIN, went down. He had a lot of stage space in Australia reserved and suddenly in the last two weeks all of that stage space has become available again. I would have loved to go to Australia, but now we’re booked into Vancouver, so I don’t think there’s any chance of switching back at this point.

Have you done any casting yet, other than Vin Diesel?

No.

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Laters!

Berge Garabedian aka JoBlo

Awesome. Thanks for the heads-up, man.

"Moriarty" out.