OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *The Chronicles Of Riddick: Dark Fury

Similar to what they did with Van Helsing, Universal Pictures decided to do an animated lead-in to their Chronicles Of Riddick live-action movie. Given the success of The Animatrix, it was a semi-growing trend at the time to do made-for-video animated spinoffs to feature films, not to be confused with all the home sequals Disney did for their original movies. Dark Fury acts as a bridge between the first movie, Pitch Black(a killer sci-fi/thriller!), and the somewhat successful COR sci-fi/adventure. Although, unlike some other media tie-ins like comic book prequels, this actually has some resonance to the given material.

Taking place right after their escape from the hellish pterodactyl planet, Riddick along with survivors Jack and Imam(all voiced by their original actors)get picked up by a swanky ship filled with space mercs. This cruiser is run by the sultry Chillingsworth, who collects bounties, not to collect on the price on their heads, but to keep them as works of art by literally putting them on ice. She gives Riddick a challenge to save his comrades in a fight to the death with some alien creatures. Riddick succeeds, and frees the others as they make their escape from an entire ship of bounty hunters set to catch them. After taking down most of the competition, Riddick squares off with Chillingsworth's main flunky, and finally the dragon lady herself. The trio gets away, but the bounty hunter Tombs lives through the ordeal with his sights set on bringing in Riddick.

Peter Chung of Aeon Flux fame was the director behind this, and his style of animation pays off very well, although there's some shots during some of the last fight that seemed to have less detail put into them, possibly to get this project done in time to coincide with the COR movie release. Dark Fury is currently available only on its on single DVD release, as well as the Riddick Trilogy DVD box set. There isn't a Blu-Ray release of it at this time, even though there are features about it shown on the Pitch Black and Chronicles Of Riddick Blu-Ray editions.