• Vin Diesel as Richard B. Riddick. A former mercenary, soldier and pilot, turned infamous criminal and murderer. Riddick has eyes that allow him to see in the dark but cause him immense pain in light; he wears goggles at all times to protect them.
• Radha Mitchell as Carolyn Fry, a docking pilot for the transport ship Hunter-Gratzner. She has a moment of weakness during the emergency landing and tries to sacrifice the ship's passenger section to save herself. Her regret over this decision causes her to become obsessed with getting the survivors off the planet.
• Cole Hauser as William J. Johns, a bounty hunter and morphine addict posing as a lawman. He is exceptionally selfish and willing to do whatever he can to save his own hide.
• Rhiana Griffith as Jack, a young girl who disguises herself as a boy to fit in. She idolizes Riddick, and shaves her head and wears goggles to copy his look.
• Keith David as Abu "Imam" al-Walid, a devout Muslim who is travelling to New Mecca. He is accompanied by three boys named Ali, Hassan, and Suleiman.
• Lewis Fitz-Gerald as Paris P. Ogilvie, an antiques dealer who sells weaponry and art.
• Claudia Black as Sharon "Shazza" Montgomery, a free settler who is travelling across the universe looking for a new home.
• John Moore as John "Zeke" Ezekiel, Shazza's companion.
• Simon Burke as Greg Owens, First Officer of the Hunter-Gratzner. During the ship's emergency landing, he stops Fry from dumping the passengers.
• Les Chantery as Suleiman
• Sam Sari as Hassan
• Firass Dirani as Ali
• Ric Anderson as Total Stranger, a surviving passenger shot dead by Zeke, who mistakes him for Riddick.
• Vic Wilson as Captain Tom Mitchell, who dies in the crash of the Hunter-Gratzner

According to Ken and Jim Wheat, the original concept of Pitch Black was suggested by David Madden during his tenure in Interscope Communications. His initial premise was: "[t]ravelers visit a planet where multiple suns mean perpetual daylight, but when an eclipse brings darkness, ghosts emerge." These "ghost" antagonists survived the first draft, but were later replaced by physical predators. Interscope approached David Twohy with the concept, letting him direct if he could refine the screenplay. Twohy had worked on an early version of Alien 3, and was aware that Pitch Black's concept had similarities to that franchise. He proposed changes to character arcs in the script. Said Twohy:

I've got three characters in this film who not only change from where they begin but also change from where you expect them to end up ... I had three leads, and they each thought they were the lead, which made for a lot of ego problems on the set. But ego problems are not always a bad thing.

Most of the filming, including all of the external locations, took place in and around Coober Pedy, South Australia. It was winter in the region, and rain before the shoot caused filming delays. Most interior sequences were shot at the Village Roadshow Studios, in Oxenford, Queensland. In Los Angeles, New Deal Studios were used for miniature photography and the interior sequence of the spaceship crash. To highlight the different suns for some of the daytime sequences, the filmmakers used a bleach bypass process during post-production.

Pitch Black opened in 1,832 theaters on 18 February 2000, grossing $11,577,688 over its opening weekend and ranking 4th at the box office. The film has a domestic gross of $39,240,659 and an international gross of $13,947,000, giving it a worldwide total of $53,187,659.
At review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 60% approval rating based on 114 reviews, with an average rating of 5.70/10. The site's consensus reads: "Despite an interesting premise (and a starmaking turn from Vin Diesel), Pitch Black is too derivative and formulaic to fully recommend to sci-fi or action fans". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and stated, "It's not an especially challenging part, but Diesel handles it with aplomb." BBC.com gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and stated it as "an entertainment and quite a good one too." Peter Bradshaw of Guardian gave the film a positive review and stated that the film "undoubtedly has something interesting about it, and that something can be summarized in two words: Vin Diesel." Nathan Rabin of A.V. Club gave the film a positive review and stated that the film "falters a bit in its last half-hour" and "reduces Diesel to delivering a pithy one-liner-but for the most part, it's terrific."

San Francisco Chronicle gave the film 0 out of 4 stars and called the film "a tiresome experience." Austin Chronicle gave the film 2 out of 5 stars and called the film "a very streamlined exercise in interplanetary mayhem and the logistics of the body count." Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, stating Pitch Black was inferior to Twohy's The Arrival (1996) and adding: "how sad it is that humans travel countless light years away from Earth, only to find themselves inhabiting the same tired generic conventions."