xXx 3 The Return of Xander Cage confirmed Padukone as a legitimate Hollywood star, after ruling the box office back in India for a decade. She picked the project well, since it became a global hit and revived the franchise enough to make further films likely. Her return in the sequel has now been confirmed and this week two major Asian stars have also been added to the sequel line-up. This makes perfect sense, since the movie was only a moderate hit in the US, taking $44million, but it pulled in a whopping $164million in China.
Variety reported that Chinese actress Zoe Zhang, a frequent collaborator with Jackie Chan, has joined the cast.
Another coup is the inclusion of major Asian pop stars Jay Chou, who made his Hollywood debut in 2011’s The Green Hornet alongside Seth Rogen and Cameron Diaz. It was a high-profile lead role in a much-hyped big-budget film but was not a great success at the box office.
A smaller role in Now You See Me 2 followed as Li, a Macanese magic shop owner.
Chou is better known worldwide as a pop star, playing to over 10million people during six world tours and selling 30million records.
As for the main cast, the director already tweeted: “All coming back.”
Nina Dobrev is set to reprise her role as Agent Becky Clearidge while Samuel L. Jackson is likely to reprise NSA agent Augustus Eugene Gibbons. e appeared in all the previous entries and director DJ Caruso has already teased his involvement in the next movie.
Caruso said: “I think there’s a bigger ‘they’re’ at play that we talked about.
“We also talked about, particularly with the political climate as it is now, not that we’re such a hugely political movie, but Sam [Jackson] talks about how we need someone to watch the watchers… So that’s kind of the idea with the next one. And then, if we can expand on that, what would the world leaders do if they know that these were the people watching the watchers?”