Profiling Scott Adkins (Hector)

Last Profile: Scott Adkins playing Hector in EX2, the right hand man to the film's main villain "Jean Vilain", played by Van Damme. 

Adkins was born in 1976 in England. His acting career took off in 2001. He's a Martial Artist/Actor who's mainly stared in straight to DVD movies. Since martial art/action movies' commercial success has declined in North America over the past two decades compared to the 80's-90's, Adkins like other martial artist/actors of his generation is struggling to break through on the big screen. His highest profile big screen role so far was in 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' as Weapon XI and EX2 is definitely offering him his biggest exposure ever to the general public. Nevertheless Adkins has a solid fan base of hardcore action movie fans who best know him as Boyka from Undisputed II & III. 

According to IMDB he was offered the role of Dan Paine in EX1 that went to Austin, maybe why he was considered again for EX2. The announcement of his role in EX2 was positively welcomed by the EX fans. It appears that he was initially set to be billed in the main cast in early September but lost his position to Hemsworth when the latter was announced. On two occasions his name appeared in the main cast: first time when Millennium inadvertently posted the cast on their website in early September, the second time was when the French distribution company of EX2 released their own teaser poster for a convention in France. After the leak of the controversial EX2 poster where his name was not billed and his face not pictured, no other official material that followed did bear his name or image. The omittance of his name and image ticked many fans off and some went as far altering the EX2 promotional material to add Adkins.

The extent of his role in EX2 is not clear but from what we've seen so far all signs indicate that he will most likely play a similar role to the one Gary Daniels held in EX1 with the same amount of screen time and importance. EX1 didn't do much for Daniels so the same destiny could be expected for Adkins, but some major differences between the two exist, Adkins is much younger and has a stronger fan base among action movie fans. With the huge success of Fast Five and depending on how further EX2 relaunches the future of action movies on the big screen, there could be new opportunities opened to him for his career development.

I personally am an old school/traditional fan of big screen 80'-90's action movies and don't watch straight to DVD action flicks. I browsed through Undisputed II & III only after Adkins was added to EX2. Nonetheless I think he has a good potential to play an important role in the future of action movies if they are commercially revived again on the big screen. That's all folks!