The rights to a hugely profitable comic book property rumored to be in line for a reboot revert back to a company owned by Netflix

The wheels may have fallen off fairly spectacularly when the sequel was panned by critics, under-performed at the box office, and was actively disowned by star Jim Carrey, but Kick-Ass remains a viable property in the right hands.

Those hands aren’t Matthew Vaughn’s anymore it would seem, with the filmmaker’s plans to mount a reboot of the franchise falling by the wayside. Under his watch, the first Kick-Ass became an instant cult classic that recouped its budget almost five times over at the global box office, won rave reviews, and delivered a bone-crunching burst of R-rated escapism to the comic book genre.

In a curious development, though, it’s been confirmed by the company’s official Twitter account that the rights to Kick-Ass and all of its various bells and whistles have now reverted back to Mark Millar’s Millarworld, which just so happens to be a subsidiary of Netflix after the streaming service purchased the publisher for a hefty sum a few years back.

Of course, following on from mega budget flop Jupiter’s Legacy and The Chosen One – which released today despite the platform not really bothering to let anybody know – it’s entirely speculative to even think that Netflix would be considering mounting a Kick-Ass reboot simply because it can.

Then again, having delivered a flop and then sent another out into the wilderness with barely any promotion, perhaps a do-over of an IP that people know and love is the right way to ensure the entire Millarworld experiment doesn’t end up being known only for its repeated failures.