When Diesel started playing Dominic Toretto again in Fast and Furious, it came after an eight year absence from the character — not counting a Tokyo Drift cameo encorporated into Furious 7 years later. In this case, his return as Xander would come either 14 or 15 years after the original XXX — yet he made it clear on Instagram he’s ready for a comeback.
While I was filming XXX, guys on set called me Air Diesel… The time to return has come. Filming starts December in the Philippines.
According to IMDb, John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris are writing The Return of Xander Cage, although there is no director attached and Diesel is the only credited cast member. If a shooting date has been picked out, however, a director should be coming soon — and since Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t have any Marvel or Quentin Tarantino movies to do for a while, bringing him back as Gibbons should be within reach.
Bringing Xander back should technically be impossible, since XXX: State of the Union killed him in an off screen assassination before Ice Cube took over. Still, James Bond has had his share of faked deaths, so it is fair that the “new breed of secret agent” should get one too.
A new XXX would have Diesel come full circle, since the 2002 original was his very first attempt to branch out from The Fast and the Furious. While it didn’t quite pan out — at least not enough to prevent Xander’s ‘death’ three years later — the now billion dollar success of the Furious franchise has allowed Diesel to bring back another old character, just as he did with Riddick.
With Fast 8 on track for an April 2017 release and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 out a month later, the window for Diesel to first shoot a XXX 2 — or technically a XXX 3 — would likely be short. Time will tell if he gets it done quick enough to put it out before his other big sequels, or not long afterwards.
In the meantime, Diesel will first be playing a new character in The Last Witch Hunter, out on Oct. 24, followed by next fall’s Iraq war based dramady Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk with Kristen Stewart, Steve Martin and Chris Tucker from director Ang Lee. But after that change of pace, it is back to the familiar spectacle of Dom, Groot and Xander, perhaps all in 2017.
Source: The Movie Network
