Tradecraft: Potential for Even More xXx Sequels and Spinoffs

The xXx franchise began life as a 2002 movie starring Vin Diesel as an extreme sports athlete turned spy. Diesel didn't return for the 2005 sequel xXx: State of the Union, but co-star Samuel L. Jackson did in his proto-Nick Fury role as eye-patched spymaster Augustus Gibbons. This time around Gibbons recruited Ice Cube as an agent with even more attitude than Diesel's Xander Cage. (Because everyone knows that the number one factor making a good agent is attitude!) So that movie could qualify as either a sequel or a spinoff. But since it underperformed at the box office, the xXx franchise has nestled itself nicely into a happy existence as a relic of the early 2000s. Now, after a decade of exactly no one clamoring for any further sequels or spinoffs... we suddenly find ourselves facing the prospect of both! In August, Vin Diesel announced that a sequel, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, would start shooting in December. (He reiterated that intention this week, though there have still been no director or supporting cast announcements.) On top of that, Deadline reported on Thursday that "Revolution Studios has entered into a multi-project agreement with Universal 1440 Entertainment, the production arm of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, to create new, non-theatrical productions based on properties in Revolution’s film library." Among the properties included in the pact... you guessed, it xXx! So we could potentially be seeing new theatrical xXx movies with Xander Cage and new direct-to-DVD (by which, of course, now I mean direct to multiple platforms) xXx spinoff movies featuring other extreme athletes or spies with attitude. (If they are all about original xXx co-star Asia Argento, I will suddenly become a lot more interested!) It should be noted, of course, that just because they can make direct-to-DVD xXx spinoff movies (akin to their very successful Scorpion King franchise) doesn't mean that Universal will make them. The Mission: Impossible franchise was once in contention for the direct-to-DVD treatment from Paramount (during the period of Tom Cruise's falling out with the studio), and of course that never happened.