Was Scott Speedman's Agent Steele Supposed To Lead xXx 3?
Was Scott Speedman's Agent Steele lined up to front xXx 3 as the titular agent? Following Vin Diesel's breakthrough with the original The Fast And The Furious, xXx was created as a star vehicle for him. While the film was a solid hit back in 2002, Diesel soon got cold feet about committing to the series. Two scripts were prepped for xXx 2; one that saw Diesel's Xander Cage fight modern-day pirates and another that revolved around him fighting a Washington conspiracy. While Diesel preferred the former concept, the studio opted for the latter, leading to Diesel departing the sequel.
In the wake of Diesel's unexpected exit, the xXx movie franchise was retooled as an anthology. The plan was for each new outing to feature a new actor in the title role, with Ice Cube's Darius Stone being the first successor. Sadly, xXx: State Of The Union proved a major disappointment, and was filled with terrible dialogue, lackluster performances and action sequences that leaned on unconvincing CGI. The movie was a bomb too, but the franchise was later revived - as was the "deceased" Cage - for 2017's xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage.
As per the original plan, xXx: State Of The Union ends with Cube's Stone driving off into the sunset and Samuel L. Jackson's Gibbons planning to recruit the next xXx. This ending left the potential casting for a follow-up wide open, and this question was answered - in a roundabout way - in xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage, which revealed Donnie Yen's Xiang was the next xXx after Stone. However, xXx 2 closes with Scott Speedman's Agent Steele accompanying Gibbons, and rumors at the time suggested maybe Speedman would front the planned xXx 3.
In xXx: State Of The Union, Scott Speedman's Kyle Steele is an NSA agent who is assigned to hunt down Stone, before aiding him when he realizes a planned coup is happening in Washington. While he's more straitlaced than Stone, Steele proves himself more than useful in a firefight, and even gets some extreme sports action in the finale when he rescues the President while hanging from a helicopter. In a Dark Horizons interview from 2005, Speedman confirmed he was signed on for xXx 3 but had no idea what his role in the story would be.
When asked directly about the idea of Agent Steele becoming the next xXx, the actor stated "I don’t know if they’d bank on me to be the next XXX. I can’t really see that. It’d be more of a comedy." At the time, Speedman had both the Underworld movies and xXx on the go, but following State Of The Union, he largely steered clear of big-budget projects. Even if the rumors of Scott Speedman's Agent Steele leading xXx 3 had merit, it seems clear from this interview he had little to no interest in actually fronting the series. The box-office failure of State Of The Union killed what plans were in store for that version of xXx 3 regardless, and Speedman's Steele neither appeared nor was mentioned in The Return Of Xander Cage.