‘Kingsman’ director teases the franchise’s ambitious next stage

Ever since it was first revealed Matthew Vaughn had grand designs for the Kingsman franchise to span at least seven feature films and a TV show, the enterprise has been viewed with a certain degree of skepticism.

That’s fair enough, really, especially when you remember that Disney now controls the property following the Mouse House’s acquisition of Fox, and bonkers R-rated action blockbusters have never really fit the company’s remit. On the plus side, Vaughn is adamant that Kingsman 3 with Taron Egerton and Colin Firth will be shooting by this time next year, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker teased the ambitious next stage of the Kingsman expansion, one that covers sequels, prequels and TV shows all at once.

“In a perfect world, we will do Kingsman 3 next year, which is the conclusion of the Eggsy-Harry relationship. It’s all ready to go. COVID has slowed us down a bit, but we’re ready to shoot next year. And then we would love to do a sequel to The King’s Man, which will be about the first decade of the Kingsman agency with our characters that you see at the end of this.

And look, if we can get that far with these two, then maybe we spin off Statesman [from Kingsman: The Golden Circle] as a TV show. I loved Loki, but we don’t want to get too greedy or too arrogant to think that we can make loads and loads of these. It’s more if the public demands it. So the second The King’s Man is nearly ready to go, but Kingsman 3 is ready to go. So that will be the next two, and if they work, then one step at a time.”

The King’s Man is now playing in theaters, and even though reviews have been tepid and the box office will no doubt be uninspiring, it doesn’t appear to have cooled Vaughn’s enthusiasm for more content. He knows that it’s all dependent on audiences wanting to see more of Kingsman‘s unique brand of irreverent espionage, which is a question that most likely won’t be answered definitively until Eggsy and Harry Hart’s story draws to a close.