AceShowbiz -

Former NFL star Tony Gonzalez is heading to the big screen. Variety reports that the 40-year-old will make his feature film debut in "XXX: The Return of Xander Cage". However, his role in the upcoming movie has yet to be revealed.

Gonzalez retired from the NFL in 2013 after spending 12 years with Kansas City Chiefs and 5 years with Atlanta Falcons. He made his acting debut in the TV movie "A.I. Assault" and once starred as Special Agent Tony Francis on "NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service".

"XXX: The Return of Xander Cage", the third installment of the action film franchise, is scheduled to open in U.S. theaters on January 20, 2017. Vin Diesel, who portrayed the title character in the first movie coming out in 2002 but was absent in the 2015 sequel starring Ice Cube, is on board to reprise his role.

Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez was recently hired to play his love interest. Samuel L. Jackson, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Nina Dobrev and Ruby Rose are other names attached to the project.

The movie will see extreme athlete turned government operative Xander Cage coming out of self-imposed exile and on a collision course with deadly alpha warrior Xiang and his team in a race to recover a sinister and seemingly unstoppable weapon known as Pandora's Box. Recruiting an all-new group of thrill-seeking cohorts, Xander finds himself enmeshed in a deadly conspiracy that points to collusion at the highest levels of world governments.