In one of the stranger decisions of the last few years in Hollywood, the xXx franchise was revived out of the blue two years ago with original star Vin Diesel returning for a third instalment in the action franchise. Against all odds, the film grossed $346 million worldwide, and unsurprisingly a fourth film has now been commissioned, and is due to enter production in December.
Diesel himself reportedly owns the rights now, having purchased them from Revolution Studios. Director D.J. Caruso will return to helm the fourth film.
The franchise originally began in 2002 when, inexplicably, there was a brief boom in extreme sports-orientated action films. xXx did pretty well, grossing $277 million at the worldwide box office, enough for a sequel to get the greenlight.
However, Diesel didn’t return for xXx: State Of The Union, which saw Ice Cube take over the lead role. The sequel fared much worse, only reeling in $71 million, and the franchise was thought to be dead. Despite seemingly no one asking for it, it was revived as mentioned above and went on to be a box office hit.
The caveat is that although the third film grossed $346 million worldwide, a mere $44.8 million of it came from the United States. It was a massive success overseas though, especially in China, and one assumes the fourth film will now be heavily geared towards international audiences.
This announcement also comes as Diesel’s very public feud with Fast & Furious co-star Dwayne Johnson is rolling on, and it’s likely only been fuelled further by the decision by Universal to move ahead with the Johnson/Jason Statham spinoff F&F movie ahead of Fast & Furious 9.
Thus, Diesel has some time on his hands and looks to have decided to blow things up as a part of another action franchise. No release date has currently been set for the film.
#Peace.Love.xXx
