Matthew Vaughn is a busy man.
His latest film from the Kingsman franchise, The King’s Man, is set to release on December 22. He’s working on post-production for his spy thriller Argylle and setting up pre-production on the third installment of the Kingsman films — The Kingsman: The Blue Blood. With so many projects, that doesn’t stop the 50-year-old director from planning out the rest of the Kingsman films, including the Statesman, and plans for The King’s Man sequels, if the film does well.
Calling from his office in London, which ironically resembled the Kingsman’s meeting room, Vaughn revealed that he has his idea boards all around his office.
“Around the corner is Kingsman 3, all ready to go,” said Vaughn during a virtual roundtable with The Nerds of Color. “We’ve done all the art and stuff. But underneath Kingsman 3, it’s The King’s Man 2 and Statesman.
Vaughn played with the idea of doing different types of agencies from all over the world — including the Spanish, French, and the Japanese.
“We did have some fun thinking if we did the spin-off in the streaming television world, it might be fun to do local language stuff,” Vaughn revealed. “So yeah, but we don’t want to overdo it and oversaturate. It’s one step at a time.”
The Kingsman 3
After the events from Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Vaughn said that the final film in the trilogy will center around Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and Harry’s (Colin Firth) relationship.
Without revealing too much, Vaughn shared, “So, we just came up with this thing — what could be the ultimate reason for them to either fall in love or to hate each other forever? So, what this movie is all about is will they or won’t they — let’s just say.”
The Statesman
With the Kingsman films, including The King’s Man, Vaughn wanted to celebrate British culture. He believes that is what made the movies work — not only the ultra-violent and cool action sequences, but of how British the story was. With the Statesman, Vaughn says it will celebrate American culture. Though he’s not American, he would work with an American writer to keep it authentic.
“[It would be] fully American. It has to be a celebration of the American culture. Remind people that there’s a great side of America [because] there really is. I think the last couple of years, America seems to be very divided now. I’m not American, but you just go ‘holy shit’. I’m sorry if I offended anyone when I say this, but I do think Trump caused a few problems or highlights. I don’t want to get too political, but there was a side to America that the world fell in love with. I think one of it is about how Americans succeeded and worked hard. You had great movies. You had great TV. You had great music [and] art. I’m English. So [I would] bring in an American in to help me do it. But I would ask them to be proud of America because I think there’s a lot to be proud of in America and there’s a lot of healing [that] needs to be done in America.”
It was confirmed that Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, and Halle Berry would reprise their roles in Statesman. As for anyone else Vaughn would like to see in the film, he shared he’d love to work with Robert De Niro in Statesman.
The King’s Man 2
For audiences who would like to know how Kingsman started and became the agency we know and love today, Vaughn wanted to intertwine Kingsman folklore with real historical events. He wanted to also bring history to life because it’s important and “the more we learn from it, the better our future can be.”
Vaughn shared a bit about the potential sequel to The King’s Man:
The King’s Man is very now set in history. And, the last speech [given] is [by] Ralph Fiennes [who plays] Oxford. He says, ‘I believe that the Treaty of Versailles was too onerous and could precipitate another war.’ It’s true, it did. The Treaty of Versailles was a joke. So, if there’s no Treaty of Versailles, there’d be no Hitler, right? So, if we’ve started off with an historical statement of the Treaty of Versailles being a bit of a problem, what is the problem that it’s going to lead to is obviously going to be World War II. So, spoiler alert — that’s going to be out there. I can’t ignore it.
As many people know, World War II was between the Allies and the Axis Powers, which included Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler. Vaughn was intrigued with Hitler’s story and showing how a bad person with good oratory skills and lots of circumstances could become dictator.
There was a really warped part of English culture that was very pro-Hitler before the war. The aristocrats all thought Hitler was amazing [at] how he was rebuilding Germany and motorways. They all were like ‘Hitler is amazing. We’ve got to be more like Hitler. We got to be more like Hitler.’ And then you’ve got certain people — Churchill and King’s Man going ‘no, this Hitler guy is a bad dude. What the fuck are you guys talking about?’ So, I’d like to show in a film — because I think kids who had no idea that Hitler was on the cover of Time Magazine as Man of the Year. Right now, they know Elon Musk is. And, I think, imagine if someone was saying to these guys ‘oh wow, Elon’s a good guy.’ Well, he’s just joined the ranks of Hitler. So that’s the sort of history and angles that does interest me.
As for how The King’s Man and Kingsman will finally bleed into each other, Vaughn revealed he placed Easter eggs into the film that do pay off. Well, almost all of them do. Vaughn reveals there is one Easter egg that is screwing the creative team up because “we didn’t quite think it out logically.”
“Now I’m looking at going, ‘oh fuck. How do we make that work?,’ Vaughn laughed. “So I’ve sort of screwed myself up already. The problem is, sometimes, on the day, you think that’s a great idea and then, [in] this case, three years later, you go, ‘now maybe I shouldn’t have done that.'”
The King’s Man is premieres in theaters on December 22.
