State of the hero in ‘XXX’? He’s in flux

Need to reacquaint yourself with the “XXX” movie franchise that hopes to make a lot of, well, $$$ in its return to theaters this weekend? Samuel L. Jackson is back in action, and moviegoers will still get plenty of bang-bang-bang for their buck. But producers have switched from a foreign locale to domestic, and an engine that’s no longer (Vin) Diesel but something a little cooler, like Ice (Cube).

Yes, indeed, after grossing $277 million worldwide in its first go-around, the secret-agent franchise that’s hoping to become a sort of “James Bond” for the next generation is bucking two staples of the 007 formula: exotic, varied locales and, most notably, having the same, debonair hero.

In the current installment of “XXX,” titled “State of the Union,” secret agent Augustus Gibbons (Jackson) finds corruption not overseas but in Washington, D.C., deep within the U.S. Capitol, as the president is targeted by dissenters from within the government who seek to overthrow him and create anarchy. As in the first film, Gibbons needs an outsider to help him, and Darius Stone (Cube), a former Special Ops soldier, is tabbed as the new go-to guy. (And Diesel? He’s still fighting bad guys, only lately as a nanny in “The Pacifier.”)

“The way we’re trying to shape this up is a little bit radical, and who knows whether it will work or not,” “State of the Union” director Lee Tamahori says of possibly having a different hero for each installment of the franchise.

It was that very idea, he says, that attracted him to this project after directing the latest Bond adventure, “Die Another Day.”

“I didn’t want to do another [Bond], not if they had stayed with the same formula,” he says. “XXX” is more of “a ‘Dirty Dozen’-meets- ‘James Bond’ formula because it’s outsiders and throwing them into the law.... You don’t always want to have the same guy running around and saving the world.”

There is already buzz that the next world-saving agent for a potential third installment of the “XXX” series will be a woman.

“I would like to see it,” Tamahori says of trying something a little more “Charlie’s Angels.” “What you want to do is try something that hasn’t been tried before. I’m not even sure if that’s possible anymore, because the ground is littered with so many variations to the [secret-agent] idea.

“What we all try to do is work outside the cliche, but you do get drawn back into it. You have to embrace that but still try and do something different.”