Trivia / xXx: Return of Xander Cage

• All-Star Cast: Most of the cast are big names in some field, regardless of whether they are professional actors or not, and there's quite a variety in the latter case. We have a top action star in Vin Diesel, a classic actor in Samuel L. Jackson, a Chinese martial arts big name in Donnie Yen, a Thai cult martial arts star in Tony Jaa, an Indian home star in Deepika Padukone, a relatively famous mixed martial artist in Michael Bisping, "The Hound" Rory McCann, a famous DJ in Ruby Rose, a hit singer in Nicky Jam, a Miss Colombia in Ariadna Gutiérrez, a record-holding NFL footballer in Tony González and a Golden Ball soccer player in Neymar. And that's not even including a 11th-Hour Ranger cameo from legendary rapper Ice Cube, reprising his role as Darius Stone.
• Channel Hop: While the first two xXx films were released by Sony's Columbia Pictures, Return of Xander Cage was released by Paramount due to xXx: State of the Union flopping. This also meant that co-producer Neal H. Moritz would not return for this film as he was locked under a long-standing first-look deal with Sony (Moritz did eventually bail to Paramount once said contract went up).
• Dyeing for Your Art: Though Ruby Rose has extensive arm tattoos in real life, most (if not all) of them were covered with new ones for her character Adele Wolff. Rose also dyed her hair dark green for the role.
• Follow the Leader: Vin Diesel has apparently taken the lessons he learned with The Fast and the Furious franchise and applied them here, namely returning after sitting out of the second installment with an ensemble team to take on the bad guys. Kudos for making that jump 2 installments sooner than in the former franchise.
• Role Reprise: Vin Diesel reprises his role as Xander Cage for the first time since xXx (2002).
• Sequel Gap: Comes out 12 years after the last XXX movie.
• What Could Have Been: Jet Li and Conor McGregor were originally cast as Xiang and Hawk. Li dropped out due to undisclosed reasons and Conor opted to focus on training instead, so they were replaced with Donnie Yen and Michael Bisping respectively.

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