Despite some recent financial headaches that halted filming for two months, the production of the upcoming Riddick, which will bring Vin Diesel back to the star-making role he first played in the 2000 sci-fi thriller Pitch Black, is moving full-speed ahead.

The David Twohy-directed sequel has just added a new player to its growing cast: according to Variety, Jordi Molla, the Spanish actor who has played outsized heavies in big-budget action movies such as Knight and Day and Bad Boys II, is currently in negotiations to play the role of “Santana, a mercenary who heads up an eight-man crew tasked with finding and killing Riddick.” The actor was recently seen as the villain in the Zoe Saldana action flick Colombiana.

It’s being reported that Katee Sackhoff, star of the great Ronald D. Moore and David Eick Battlestar Galactica revival, is in final negotiations to join Vin Diesel on the cast of the Chronicles of Riddick sequel, which is yet to be titled.

Last we heard about the sequel was that production had been shut down due to lack of funds back in November, but now everything seems to be back on track and production has resumed.

The production of Riddick, the latest in the sci-fi action franchise starring Vin Diesel as a fearsome criminal antihero with exceptional night vision, was well underway before it was shut down reportedly due to a severe cash flow shortage.

TMZ spoke with Michel Trudel, the owner of the studio in Montreal where the film was shooting, who said that Diesel’s production company One Race Films has failed to make its payments for the use of his facilities on time. As a result Trudel states that he was forced to evict the Riddick cast and crew from the studio and even changed the locks until he is paid in full. He’s not alone there; according to unnamed sources close to the production, more than a few members of the crew have not received their paychecks in over two weeks.

The latest cinematic adventure of Riddick, the vicious yet resourceful criminal anti-hero played by Vin Diesel who first appeared in the 2000 sci-fi thriller Pitch Black and later returned in his own big-budget adventure The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004, has slowly been gaining momentum since it was first announced nearly two years ago. We previously reported on the new film, which will be simply titled Riddick, HERE and HERE . Today Diesel has released a piece of concept art on his Facebook page. You can check out the full image below this article.

The independently-financed film will reportedly discard the elaborate mythology that Diesel and writer-director David Twohy were initially developing for Riddick to explore and take the character back to basics, putting him into a struggle for survival on a hostile alien planet that will make every other battle he has fought in his life seem like a prelude. Riddick finds himself pitted against otherworldly beasts and mercenaries out for his blood. The project has an undetermined 2012 release date.

It’s been more than a year and a half since we first reported that a new movie featuring Riddick, the badass monster-slaying criminal with excellent night vision first played by Vin Diesel in the 2000 sci-fi/horror hit Pitch Black, was going ahead with Diesel once more starring and David Twohy, the writer and director of Pitch Black and its big-budget 2004 sequel The Chronicles of Riddick, back on scripting and directing duties (you can read about that HERE). The movie will be titled simply Riddick and will reportedly be smaller in scale than Chronicles and feature the character doing what he does best: kicking all kinds of ass while saying very little.

The Chronicles of Riddick was intended to be the start of a new trilogy for the character as he ventured into the realm of dark fantasy as opposed to the B-movie creature feature style of Pitch Black, but Universal Pictures put any plans for future sequels on hold when the movie only grossed back $57 million of its reported $110 million budget. Undeterred by this development Twohy and Diesel have persisted in bringing a new Riddick movie to the big screen over the years; in that time Diesel has found success with the Fast and the Furious franchise and Twohy has directed A Perfect Getaway.