xXx's Opening James Bond Gag Needed A 007 Actor To Work
xXx's opening scene features a pointed jab at the James Bond series, but it needed a 007 star to really bite. In the late 1990s, Sony announced plans to work on their own James Bond movie series, having made a deal with producer Kevin McClory. Bond fans will know that McClory worked on the screenplay for Thunderball, which was at one point set to become the very first 007 movie. Fleming later wrote a novel based on this script, which introduced iconic elements like SPECTRE and Blofeld. This led to a messy lawsuit that saw McClory gain the rights to the Thunderball story, and he later mounted a remake of sorts with 1983's Never Say Never Again, starring Sean Connery as Bond.
Sony, who also held the rights to the first Bond novel Casino Royale, made a deal with McClory in the '90s to produce a new 007 adventure dubbed Warhead. Liam Neeson and Timothy Dalton were mooted as potential Bonds, but MGM soon filed a lawsuit that halted Sony's plans. The lawsuit was eventually settled, with Sony exchanging their rights to Casino Royale for MGM's rights to Spider-Man. In the aftermath, Sony attempted to mount its own spy series with xXx, a Vin Diesel star vehicle intended to show that 007 was out of date in the modern world.
Related: Was Scott Speedman's Agent Steele Supposed To Lead xXx 3? (Rumors Explained)
xXx is a codename for Diesel's Xander Cage, an extreme sports star forced into working for the NSA, and he's recruited to infiltrate a terrorist group after one of their agents is killed. This is shown inxXx's opening sequence, where a Bond-style secret agent flees the group and seeks shelter in — of all places — a Rammstein concert. Naturally, a tuxedo-clad agent is somewhat out of place in that setting and he's swiftly
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