Long before the revivedFast & Furiousfranchise became a multi-billion dollar property, Vin Diesel stole every scene as the goggle wearing antihero Riddick inPitch Black, a sci-fi horror yarn starring Radha Mitchell and Cole Hauser, where Diesel’s star power shined brightly, even through the movie’s awesome dark atmosphere. Here we’ll take a look at 10 things you never knew aboutPitch Black.
If you want something done right…
Pitch Blackwriter/director David Twohy got his start as a screenwriter, working onCritters 2: The Main Course,Warlock,The Fugitive,Terminal Velocity,Waterworld, andG.I. Jane, plus two he also directed:TimescapeandThe Arrival. “Critters 2is something I’m still not terribly pleased is on my resume,” he deadpanned to Starlog in an in-depth feature published in 2000. “Sometimes, over a writer’s dead body, things turn out well and sometimes they don’t. As a writer, you just don’t have control over that. The only way it gets better for the writer is if the writer directs.”
Interscope approached him in 1998 with a story a couple of other writers had cooked up, promising that if he could refine the screenplay, they’d let him direct.
The original script was by the brotherly duo of Ken and Jim Wheat, who’d worked on horror sequels likeA Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream MasterandThe Fly II, as well as the Star Wars TV movieEwoks: The Battle for Endor, which they also directed. Their script was calledNightfall. The broad strokes were already in place: a crash-landing on an alien planet, the big eclipse, a photophobic monster.
In their drafts, the convict was female.
Twohy had done some early work on what would becomeAlien 3. Everyone involved knewPitch Blackbore a lot of similarities toALIEN. So the director insisted they make some changes, particularly when it came to character arcs. “EvenALIENhad stock characters who merely reacted to what was going on,” he explained. “I’ve got three characters in this film who not only change from where they begin but also change from where you expect them to end up.” Keeping an eye on the character arcs and continuity proved even more challenging than the blue screens and effects.
“I had three leads, and they each thought they were the lead, which made for a lot of ego problems on the set,” the director explained. “But ego problems are not always a bad thing.” ForThe Arrival, he only had one lead to focus on: Charlie Sheen. “Fortunately, Charlie was fairly sober during that whole experience,” he said.
They didn’t want big names.
Pitch Blackwas made for a modest production budget of $25 million. While the studio kicked around some A-list names for a moment, the director insisted they go with fresher faces, in order to up the action and suspense. “Let’s face it, if Nicolas Cage is in the movie, you know he’ll be standing at the end of the day,” he explained to Starlog. Two short filmsVin Dieselwrote, directed, and starred in impressed Steven Spielberg, who gave him a small role inSaving Private Ryan. Diesel was the voice ofThe Iron Giant, as well. Cole Hauser, the leader of the Nazi gang in Higher Learning and one of Will Hunting’s pals, would later appear in2 Fast 2 Furious, which coincidentally was the onlyFast & Furiousmovie without Vin Diesel.
The eye doctor
The contact lenses worn by Vin Diesel were prototypes that had never been tested or worn before. In an interview with Coming Attractions around the time of the film’s release, the actor described them as something like the hubcaps on “your father’s 1960 Plymouth.” On the first day of shooting, they had to fly in an optometrist from three hours away to their remote location, because they couldn’t get the contacts off. Diesel was later taken to the hospital to make sure his eyes were OK. Even with the contacts, there were a handful of CGI enhancements. “They would accent a moment in a sequence and punch up the effect a little bit,” Diesel explained. “Add a little light in the eyes. For the most part, it was just contacts.”
Animal inspirations
ThePitch Blackteam were careful to avoid the look and feel of well known cinematic creatures we’d seen before, specificallyGodzilla, the velociraptors ofJurassic Park, and of course, the creatures of the Alien franchise. In a Fangoria cover story, the movie’s FX supervisor describedPitch Black’s monsters, which are blind and use echolocation to hunt prey, as “a great white shark melded with a pterodactyl, with the killer instinct of a lion.” He added that, “the creature inAlienhad a very strong intelligence and a very hierarchical system; this thing will kill its own kind.”
It was cold in the desert.
Pitch Blackwas filmed in the Australian desert, for both budgetary reasons and the overall look. There were six-day weeks and 17-hour days. It was also wintertime in Australia, which meant it was relatively cool outside. The actors were misted with water to give the appearance of sweat. The Australian Outback has served as the backdrop for many films, includingThe Road Warrior,Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and of course,Crocodile Dundee.
The ship is still there.
A local shop owner in the Australian town of Coober Pedy, situated 500 miles north of Adelaide, bought the spaceship prop from the Pitch Black production. As recently as 2016, it still sat outside, next to some showers and toilets. The opal mining capital of Australia’s towns people mostly choose to live underground, where there are residences, shops, churches, a campground, and even a golf course.
It wasn’t planned as a franchise.
SincePitch Blackwas released in 2000, we’ve gotten two more theatrically released films about the Riddick character, as well as a number of animated features, video games, and novelizations. In late 2014, Diesel announced plans for the long discussed fourth installment, as well as a TV series called Merc City. But as Twohy explained in a 2013 interview, “I was just trying to get out of Australia with my skin, without the bond company coming in and tacking my hide to the side of a barn.”
It wasn’t until audiences started to respond to the Riddick character in test screenings that the director started to think they were on to something. “We certainly didn’t plan it as a franchise,” he told Screen Rant. “We were just so consumed with trying to make the first movie work.”
Novel differences.
ThePitch Blacknovelization contains a few differences. It offers more backstory for Riddick, explaining he was a Company soldier turned whistleblower, exposing some black ops nastiness. Jack is introduced as Audrey from the start. In the book, as in the originalPitch Blackscript, Imam and his followers practice Chrislam. The blended faith is also mentioned in Riddick video game Escape from Butcher Bay.
TheFast & Furiousconnection
There’s a much deeper connection betweenPitch Blackand theFast & Furiousfranchise than what’s on the surface. During production onPitch Black, the studio folded; Universal came in at the eleventh hour and agreed to release it. “It was kind of a Hail Mary, it predatedThe Fast and the Furious, but led into that relationship,” Diesel explained in 2012. He said he turned down $20 million to star in2 Fast 2 Furious, opting to take $50,000 to do a WGA draft ofChronicles of Riddick, a big-budget follow-up toPitch Blackreleased in 2004. While making the R-RatedRiddickin 2012, the actor told a roundtable of journalists, “[We’re] sitting on this set because I did a cameo inTokyo Drift. We leveraged this cameo inTokyo Driftso hard, to reboot a franchise that was literally dying.” Diesel got his second chance at aPitch Blackfollow-up and eventually, Universal got Dom Toretto back in the driver’s seat.
