In all my science fiction movies, I try to blend the familiar with the futuristic so as not to be too off putting to the audience. There is always something familiar they can grab onto.

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

After I script the movie, I have to storyboard it out, I have to budget it, and I have to understand if I can afford all those visual effects or not.

If I know what my finale is when I'm writing a screenplay, then I don't always have to chart out every scene before that. I can adequately find my way. I'm experienced enough to do that.

While you're making the film and working with the actors, if you want to have a little room to breathe and experiment and play, it grows, and you want that to happen. It's not enough to just shoot the script. You've gotta come up with new inspiration, as you shoot it. There's gotta be room for that and time for that, so it grows.

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.

There are trappings of science fiction which I kind of embrace, but there are also cliches which I run from.

I don't want to have so much humor [in films] that it undermines the jeopardy, but enough to sometime relieve tension.

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.