It was about 4 years ago when Vin Diesel told us that we should expect to see him in at least 1 more "xXx" flick.
A year passed before we would hear anything further on the possibility of the threequel, when director Rob Cohen was asked about it during an interview while doing press for the then upcoming "Alex Cross" movie he helmed.
Cohen, talking to Crave Online, talked about his plans to bring back Xander Cage (which would see the return of Vin Diesel in the role; recall Ice Cube took over for the second one – "xXx: State of the Union" – playing Darius Stone/xXx).
Cohen directed the first, but Lee Tahamori directed the second movie in the franchise. And Cohen said that he will indeed return for #3, revealing that he was actually quite far into his plans for the third film, which he said will be shot in 3D.
In fact, he told Crave Online that he’d already shot test footage for the film: “We did all new extreme sports things… I don’t know if you saw my Verizon wingsuit commercial, I had been preparing the climax of ‘xXx 3D’ to be a wingsuit sequence, an actual physical fight in the air at terminal velocity. So that commercial was a warmup.”
A behind-the-scenes look at the making of that commercial is embedded below.
Cohen added that he was waiting for Vin Diesel to get the "Fast & Furious" franchise done, so that he can focus on "xXx" part 3, stating: “I’m just waiting for Vin to get his head out of doing back to back ‘Fasts’ to sit down and really get him to focus on doing ‘xXx 3D’… That’s what I called it because we’re going to shoot it in 3D. I wanted to do an action film in 3D.”
Doesn’t everyone…
But maybe this is actually one film that could lend itself nicely to 3D, given all the extreme action sequences common in the franchise, and which Cohen seems to want raise the ante on: “I would take more chances. I shot some Coca-Cola commercials in 3D and had a lot of fun with the Y axis. It was good.”
And as for who the villain would be in "xXx 3D," Cohen had this to say: “He’s up against a brother and sister, twins who are doing terrible things.”
By the way, he didn’t say whether Samuel L. Jackson will return as bad-ass NSA Agent Augustus Gibbons. But I assume he likely will.
Skip ahead 3 years later, to just a few days ago, when Diesel shared via his Instagram account that he is indeed returning for the third "xXx" film with filming set to begin in December in the Philippines – as the Instagram embed says below.
IMDB does list the project under the title "xXx: The Return of Xander Cage" but no release date mentioned. Although with filming starting in December, I’d expect a 2017 release, given how lengthy shoots of this kind can take, as well as all the post-production work that will likely have to be done.
Worth noting is that Cohen’s name isn’t listed as director. The slot is currently blank.
In the meantime, Diesel can next be seen in "The Last Witch Hunter" which will be out in October of this year.
Here’s the Instagram post:
A photo posted by Vin Diesel (@vindiesel) on
And here’s the making of Cohen’s Verizon commercial:
