Jean-Claude Van Damme Set For Final Action Film With What’s My Name?

Jean-Claude Van Damme has one last action film in him, and its set to begin production soon. Deadline reports that the action icon will star in What’s My Name?, playing a fictionalized version of himself for a second time after his turn in 2008’s JCVDM. Van Damme told the outlet that this will be his final action movie.

The site reports that Jeremy Zag is directing the film, which was written by Nick Vallelonga (Green Book) and Paul Sloan. The film features Van Damme playing himself, who wakes up from a coma following a car accident with amnesia and unrecognizable to everyone, including himself. He ends up in a series of fights against various fighters he’s faced during his career in “a quest for his own identity and life meaning” that leads into one final match. Zag noted that the film will shoot in Paris. Tyler Thompson will produce for Cross Creek alongside Zag and Van Damme, with Cross Creek fully financing the film.

“I wanted to leave the stage but with a revisit of my career, starting with Bloodsport, the one where I started to become famous,” Van Damme told the outlet. “I want this to be a new Bloodsport but on a higher level. In the film, I am on my way down in terms of career, and as I come out of a premiere of another action movie, I am not happy because I’ve been living in hotels the past 30 years, which is actually true. We’re going to bring real elements from my real life and what happened to me. I came from Belgium, all the way to Hollywood. I succeeded, I failed, I came back. So I’m walking out on the street after the premiere, and boom! — a car hits me because I’m drunk. When I wake up from the impact, I don’t know what’s my name, and no one recognizes me.”

Zag added, “He’s trapped in this catch-22 where his heart is his only guide and that road will lead him through a journey that includes a lot of fights, in what will be a real action mainstream movie where we treat JC as a real human superhero.”

Among the expected opponents for Van Damme in the film are Dolph Lundgren (Universal Soldier), Tong Po from Kickboxer (played by Michel Qissi) and Bolo Yeung, who co-starred with Van Damme in both Bloodsport and Double Impact.