Whatever happened to the third xXx!?

A couple of years back, director Rob Cohen announced he’d attained Vin Diesel’s interest in doing a third “xXx” movie.

Despite the fact Diesel’s character was killed off in the sequel (starring Ice Cube), “xXx : The Return of Xander Cage” would’ve seen the star of the 2002 hit back on hero duties.

The only crowd seemingly shaky on the idea of a new “xXx” was Sony, who lost a bit of dough on the ill-fated “xXx 2 : State of the Union”. As such, Cohen was forced to find another home for his project, with Paramount jumping at the chance to house another franchise.

But that was then, this is now. And where is the flick?

Well, despite scouring Australia and New Zealand for some stunt-ready locations, plus hiring a complete crew to work on the film, “xXx” was put on the back-burner.

Nobody’s talking though… well, not until today.

Cohen, speaking to We Got This Covered about his next flick “Alex Cross”, says the reason “xXx : Return of Xander Cage” went away is because of Diesel’s choca-bloc schedule.

“It’s sort of dormant, I’m waiting for Vin [Diesel] to get his head out of Fast and Furious sequels.”

If “xXx : Return of Xander Cage” doesn’t happen, there’s always the possibility of Cohen, who directed “Fast and the Furious”, reuniting with Diesel elsewhere, by returning to direct a future sequel in that franchise.

“I’d be happy to do it. I mean, it is my baby. No matter what way they twist it, I am still the guy who did the first one and made it what it was. I think that for a series to last ten or twelve years, you have to keep growing. I don’t know that I would have gone to the heist world, but the fact that it did $550 million, twelve years after the first, is a compliment to what we started out to do.

The first couple sequels though, what I hated about them was that it was just for money, the studio was just milking the cash cow. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill it. If you were to just watch Tokyo Drift, you’d say “I never want to see anything related to Fast and Furious again.””

Say what you will about “xXx”, particularly that god-awful sequel, but there’s definitely money-making potential there for a third film.