Due to a strong friendship formed between the two actors on the set of O Grande Dragão Branco (1988), Jean-Claude Van Damme wanted no one but Bolo Yeung to play the lead villain in this movie.
Van Damme wanted to play twins to help change his image. "One of them is violent and the other is not, so the audience can see the contrast in my work," he said. "This picture has comedy, romance, a love story. So it is not all action and fighting. When I fight on screen, I blend dancing and fighting. Grace plus power is very nice."
Van Damme said his real life personality was closer to Chad than Alex. "In real life I am not this cold, quiet guy who goes around kicking butt."
In 2010, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bolo Yeung were giving a martial art demonstration and Van Damme said hopefully one day he and Yeung will put a project together "Double Impact 2" and maybe Yeung will play a friend and not any enemy. In a 2012 interview promoting Os Mercenários 2 (2012), Van Damme mentioned that he would like to make another Double Impact movie with a more serious tone. During the interview, he also gave a rough idea of the plot: "Two twins one is coming back from Asia to Los Angeles to help his brother who is a con-artist and pretending to be a big Hollywood producer and he's in trouble with the mob". A Double Impact 2 script has been written by Van Damme and Sheldon Lettich (who co-wrote Bloodsport and Double Impact). Van Damme said "Hopefully, somebody smart enough, like an agent or a producer, can put that back together...I'm excited about it, you know?"
Director Albert Pyun was briefly approached when the project was then called 'The Corsican Brothers' in the late 1980s. He said on his Facebook page in 2012: "The last time I've spoken with JCVD was on the roof of a building across the street from Cannon on Wilshire. JCVD wanted to talk in private and he told me the story he wanted to do for his next film called "Corsican Brother" which became Double Impact I believe. JCVD asked if I would want to direct it for him. The whole idea of TWO JCVDs seemed a bit far fetched and I did not commit either way but told him I had reservations about how the twins idea would work. I told him I thought he should keep moving in the direction of a pure action star and leave the gimmick movies behind. Haven't seen or talked to him since directly."