What is the future of the Kingsman franchise?
A decade ago, Matthew Vaughn delivered a shot in the arm to the spy genre with Kingsman. His foul-mouthed take on James Bond-esque action and espionage won legions of fans and spawned a 2017 sequel that unfortunately squandered a lot of that goodwill — and gave us an Elton John cameo.
But questions abound as to what the next step for the franchise will be. In 2021, we got prequel movie The King's Man, which told us all about the earliest days of the Kingsman organisation during the First World War. That movie promptly set up a sequel of its own.
The tendrils of the Kingsman universe now extend throughout just about every facet of Vaughn's current career. He hasn't yet delivered Kingsman 3, but the logo above that tailor's shop keeps cropping up in everything he does deliver. So let's take stock and work out where the franchise will go next.
Kingsman: The Blue Blood
It has been seven years since Kingsman fans last saw Eggsy — Taron Egerton's teen tearaway turned suave secret agent — in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Since then, Vaughn has spoken repeatedly of a planned third movie, which would see Egerton return as Eggsy alongside Colin Firth as his gentlemanly mentor Harry Hart.
The trilogy-closer, currently given working title The Blue Blood, has been repeatedly pushed forward in time and was at one stage planned to shoot back-to-back with prequel The King's Man, which ultimately arrived in 2021.
Read more: Taron Egerton says filming for Kingsman is 'further back in the pipeline' (BANG Showbiz)
In February 2024, Vaughn explained to Collider that Egerton's jam-packed schedule is a big stumbling block, but he wants to get to it before Firth and Egerton are too old to play their roles. He said: "That'll be the next year, because Taron's bloody busy. He's doing another movie, the guy that did Blackbird, they're doing another big TV show. So I have to wait for his availability as well."
The King's Man: The Traitor King
The post-credits sequence at the end of Kingsman prequel The King's Man delivered one of the most outrageous cameos of recent years, for better or worse. In the movie, audiences saw the formation of the Kingsman organisation and its role in the First World War. The post-credits scene introduced David Kross as none other than Adolf Hitler.
Read more: The King's Man gave Ralph Fiennes a second chance as an umbrella-wielding hero (Yahoo Entertainment)
Vaughn confirmed to Collider in October 2023 that he had a completed script for The Traitor King, which will follow the ways in which fears about communism allowed Hitler's fascism to rise to power. Given the established "alternative history" setting of The King's Man, this could go in bizarre directions.
It sounds like this will be the next Kingsman movie to head into production, unless a surprising gap opens up in Taron Egerton's calendar.
Statesman
The 2017 Kingsman sequel introduced the universe's American equivalent of the titular organisation, known as Statesman. Shortly after The Golden Circle's release, Vaughn announced that the Statesmen would get their own spin-off film, though this was later reconfigured as a TV series inspired by what Marvel has done on Disney+.
This project isn't as far along the pipeline as either The Blue Blood or The Traitor King and Vaughn confessed in a 2021 interview with ScreenRant that, although he has a "really fun idea" for Statesman, he's "scared of television because it's such a different medium to what I'm used to".
Given the widespread disdain towards the second Kingsman movie and the amount of potential projects on Vaughn's plate, it would be a huge surprise if this ever came into being. Statesman is very likely to remain on the shelf.
Argylle
Matthew Vaughn took a break from Kingsman to direct spy caper Argylle earlier this year. But that seemingly stand-alone story came with a sting in the tail. The final moments of the movie revealed Henry Cavill — with questionable hair and an even more questionable accent — as the "real" Agent Argylle, while the post-credits scene established the aforementioned real Argylle as a member of Kingsman.
Louis Partridge played the young Argylle in that post-credits scene and Vaughn has explained that he intends to make an Argylle prequel exploring the character's young days, presumably as a member of Kingsman.
Read more: Argylle director Matthew Vaughn confronts ‘vitriolic’ response to film (The Independent)
However, it's crucial to note that Argylle was nothing short of a disaster at the box office. The film grossed just $96m (£74m) from a reported budget in the region of £200m (£154m). Some reports suggested that Argylle needed to make $500m (£386m) just to break even, and it didn't even get close. It would take a foolhardy studio to back another one of those movies. However, Vaughn controls all of these franchises himself through Marv Studios, so the final call might come down to him alone.
Kick-Ass crossover
Matthew Vaughn and Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar have been working together on something, which Vaughn keeps cryptically teasing. Initially, both men talked about reviving Kick-Ass in some form, but Vaughn has most recently suggested a link between Kingsman, Argylle, and an unnamed third franchise that could well end up being a Kick-Ass reboot.
Read more: Kick-Ass reboot won't feature original characters (BANG Showbiz)
While promoting Argylle, Vaughn told Yahoo: "At Marv, the company I work for, I would say Kingsman is on the left, Argylle’s very much on the right. And we've got this place in the middle where one day I want these worlds to intersect."
Vaughn clearly has big plans for his movie universe, but the question remains whether anyone will particularly care beyond their existing affection for Kingsman. I guess we'll find out.
