XXX: State of the Union – Why Did Vin Diesel Quit This Sequel?

Back in the summer of 2002, everyone thought XXX was going to be the next blockbuster action sensation. Vin Diesel, based on the success of The Fast and the Furious, was a newly minted megastar, and it was set to be the movie that would not only turn him into the next Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, but it was also going to make the James Bond series irrelevant. While a box office hit, it wasn’t the worldwide smash Sony’s home studio was expecting. In fact, it made about $200 million less than the next James Bond movie, Die Another Day, which came out the same year. A new spy movie DID come out that year that would fundamentally alter the James Bond series, but it was The Bourne Identity, not XXX. Nevertheless, the movie made enough money to merit a sequel. Plans for a follow-up existed before XXX ever hit theaters, with not one but two scripts being prepared for the new franchise. Yet, by the time the sequel hit cinemas three years later, Vin Diesel was no longer the lead, being replaced by Ice Cube. What happened?

To understand how Diesel’s career, for a time, went upside down in the aftermath of XXX, you need to understand the man’s ambitions for himself. Diesel didn’t just want to be an action star – he wanted to be the king of all genres. A lifelong Dungeons and Dragons fan, he had a particular fondness for fantasy. He could have expanded on the niche of urban action films he’d found himself in. Still, instead of signing up for 2 Fast 2 Furious, he ended up starring in a lavish, huge-budget sequel to his own Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, which swapped the genre from horror to fantasy, as was supposed to kick off a massive franchise. However, the movie didn’t perform up to expectations, and that, compared with the perceived underperformance of XXX, made people rethink whether or not he was the big star everyone assumed he’d become. It didn’t help that his movie, A Man Apart, bombed, while a really good Sidney Lumet movie he made, Find Me Guilty, barely got released. By the time XXX2 went into production, Diesel’s career seemed over, but ironically the same month it came out, he starred in a low-budget comedy called The Pacifier, which became a big hit. Eventually, he was coaxed back to the Fast & Furious franchise, with it becoming the globe-trotting super spy franchise XXX had been planned to be. 

Which leaves us with XXX: State of the Union. The script, which was written by Simon Kinberg, who would go on to pen many controversial additions to the X-Men franchise, was passed on not only by Diesel, but also by director Rob Cohen. Ironically, the replacement wound up being Lee Tamahori, whose Bond movie had so soundly beaten XXX at the box office. Without Diesel, the choice was made to activate a new XXX agent. Xander Cage was killed off, with a short film called “The Death of Xander Cage” even being released on a reissue of the original XXX that showed Cage, who was played by Diesel’s stunt double, being graphically blown up. I guess people just thought Diesel was done at the time.

Rather than go for an obvious Diesel substitute, the producers went outside the box and cast an our of left field choice – Ice Cube. Now, I know a lot of you are reading this are wondering how exactly you get from Vin Diesel to Ice Cube. At the time, Ice Cube had starred in a series of high-grossing comedies, including the Friday films, the Barbershop films, and Are We There Yet? Even still, he hadn’t even come close to proving himself as an action star, with his only entry into the genre being John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, which was a disaster.

Even still, they went full steam ahead, with Ice Cube unconvincingly cast as Darius Stone, an ex-Navy SEAL who gets busted out of prison by Samuel L. Jackson’s returning Augustus Gibbons, who has a bigger, more action-driven role this time. He’s chosen because the bad guy, Willem Dafoe’s Secretary of Defence, Deckert, happens to be Stone’s old military foe. To give Cube some backup, Scott Speedman, who had the Underworld series going at the time, was brought in as a young NSA agent, while rapper Xzibit played Stone’s sidekick.

Ice Cube was no Diesel, and the studio slashed the budget for the sequel by about a third compared to the original film. It also wasn’t prepped as a summer blockbuster, with it set for a spring release. As such, it was more of a modest programmer compared to the original, as no one expected the movie to become a blockbuster. Predictably, the finished film came off like a shlock B-movie. Audiences weren’t thrilled by Cube’s debut as an action hero, with many thinking he didn’t have the right vibe to carry a movie like this. Audiences stayed away in droves, with the movie grossing a disastrous $26 million domestically, which was about $115 million less than the last movie made. Just like that, the franchise was deader than a doornail. Cube bounced back nicely, with his Ride Along series giving him another shot at action, albeit on a more modest scale. 

While that could have been the end of the franchise, Diesel’s career was reinvigorated hugely following the success of the new Fast and Furious sequels. As such, the idea was hatched to relaunch the franchise, with an eye on the international markets that were eating up Diesel’s other franchise. Xander Cage was brought back from the dead, and Ice Cube’s Darius Stone, far from being disavowed, was welcomed into the fold – but that’s a story for another day! 

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