This might be stating the obvious, but Vin Diesel loves a franchise. The action star has the ninth installment in the Fast and Furious series in the can and awaiting release, he’ll make his seventh appearance as Groot when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 arrives in 2023, a Bloodshot sequel was recently announced and he’s also part of James Cameron’s Avatar sequels, and that’s without even mentioning that he’s still developing a fourth Riddick and a second Last Witch Hunter.
xXx: Return of Xander Cage, meanwhile, marked his first time putting on the tattoos and comically oversized fur coat in fifteen years, and it was comfortably the best entry yet. The first movie is so painfully early 2000s that it hurts, while sequel State of the Union swapped out Diesel for Ice Cube and bombed hard.
Return of Xander Cage was big, loud and stupid, though, which ultimately worked in its favor. Director D.J. Caruso embraced the ridiculousness of the premise and never took things too seriously, and a strong international showing propelled it to almost $350 million at the box office. Diesel has already admitted that he’s planning a fourth entry, but insider Daniel Richtman now claims that an entire shared universe is in the works.
According to the tipster, spinoffs about secondary characters are being considered, with Ruby Rose’s Adele Wolff one of the names mentioned along with Cube’s Darius Stone, even though it didn’t work out too well for him the last time. If anyone from the xXx franchise gets their own movie, though, it should be Donnie Yen’s Xiang, because the guy’s a proven martial arts icon with charisma to spare. As of yet, however, there’s not much available in the way of further details on what Diesel is planning, but it sounds like we can expect a lot more from the series in the years to come.
