Tradecraft: XXX Director Chosen

Ericson Core sounds like a mobile phone to me. Didn't Pierce Brosnan use one to steer his remote-controlled BMW in Tomorrow Never Dies? Apparently not. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ericson Core is a cinematographer-turned-director, and he'll be helming the next xXx movie, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. That's the one marking the triumphant return of Vin Diesel to the series after his character was unceremoniously killed off in a DVD special feature on the extra-extreme "uncensored, unrated director's cut" edition of the first movie, paving the way for an "even more extreme" Ice Cube to take over as the NSA's resident extreme sports secret agent. Extreme enough for you? Anyway, it was previously reported that the new xXx movie would reteam the original star with the original director, Rob Cohen. But Cohen has since jumped ship in favor of the medieval action epic Medieval. So now directing duties fall to the Vin-approved Core, who previously served as Director of Photography on The Fast and the Furious before making his directing debut with the Mark Wahlberg football drama Invincible. The trade reports that "John Brancato and Michael Ferris (Terminator Salvation) wrote the script for Xander Cage. Richard Wilkes, who wrote the original movie, did a recent polish."