Damn, my first cut that I showed to distributors was probably about two hours and 20 minutes, even though my contract said two hours. So, I had to lose 20 minutes. It's incredible that it just keeps happening.

We got together and realized that Universal made it clear that they were out of the Riddick business. They didn't want to spend that kind of money anymore. So, it was going to be an independent movie.

When you do a studio picture, all the paperwork and legal stuff is already taken care of!

You hear people say that there's too much CG in movies today, but CG is what allows me to take a green-painted wall in a studio and make it disappear, and then put 100 miles of landscape in. CG, in the right hands, can be a marvelous tool.

Theres so much diversity of opinion out there, so ultimately you have to listen to it, put it aside, and make what you want to make.

I guess you don't make any franchise movies unless the fans are there.

Had we had all the money in the world to spend and we were doing another studio movie, we probably would have jumped quickly into the Necromonger universe and done an Orpheus Descending movie there. We didn't have that kind of resource. So, we said, this time, "If not that, this time, then what is it? What does this new movie look like?" Quickly, just in talking about it very simply with Vin [Diesel] in his kitchen, we decided on a survival, left-for-dead story, where Riddick could, as a character, reclaim the animal side.