Modern day Sylvester Stallone style mush mouth actor Vin Diesel continues his box office win streak with a decent debut for ‘Riddick’ at just shy of $19 million. The previous installment saw a large box office draw, but that was off-set by an equally large budget. It appears the franchise is important enough to Mr. Diesel to take a cut in pay…or production costs (likely both) in order to get this installment made. Nice to see Universal is happy to cash in so long as they don’t have any skin in the game. “Rent-A-Distribution” deal for a guy with Vin Diesel’s name recognition? The suits at Uni must have thought this was going to be a real turkey.
Who knows, but either way, opening with $19 million on a $38 million budget doesn’t sound so bad. If it continues to plod along, the film will likely be another nice feather in Diesel’s box office cap. Now, if he can just crank out another half a dozen ‘Fast and the Furious’ films, he should be able to retire with more money than God.
See the full report at TheWrap.
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