According to Bloody-Disgusting, Urban is on board to reprise his role as Vaako, the high-ranking Necromancer who, in Chronicles, was manipulated by his ruthless wife Dame Vaako (Thandie Newton) into making a power play against head-evil guy Lord Marshal (Colm Feore).
A previous script breakdown for Riddick made mention of Vaako's role, which is essentially an extended cameo. Having finished the previous film as emperor of the Necromancer Army, Diesel's Riddick is enjoying the perks of living godhood with Vaako as his right hand man. For some as-yet unknown reason, Richard B. Riddick persuades Vaako to accompany him to his home planet of Furya, but everything goes wrong along the way and Riddick ends up stranded on a desolate alien planet populated by hungry alien beasts and mercenaries out for the anti-hero's blood.
After the PG-13 blockbuster histrionics of The Chronicles of Riddick proved prohibitively expensive and not-terribly profitable, Diesel and writer-director David Twohy are returning the franchise to its roots with a tale more like that of Riddick's introduction in the R-rated Pitch Black. Vaako's part in the film will ply out through flashbacks, and seems largely like a matter of tying up some loose ends.
The Bloody-Disgusting report also refers to the film as The Chronicles of Riddick: Dead Man Stalking. Whether that's a working title or an actual option for the Universal Pictures release is anyone's guess. Regardless, production should be getting underway fairly soon, so that Vin Diesel will have plenty of time to get back to his other Universal franchise with a sixth The Fast and the Furious film, once again directed by Justin Lin and currently scheduled to drop on May 24, 2013.
Karl Urban is no stranger to genre fare, having made a big impression as Eomer in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Return of the King. He damn near stole the show as Bones McCoy in the JJ Abrams-directed Star Trek reboot, a role he'll slide back into for the nigh-inevitable sequel. Additionally, he stars as Judge Dredd himself in Dredd, a new take on the futuristic law-enforcer due in 2012.
