This is a bit surprising. Given the tepid box office reception for the geek hyped “Kick-Ass,” the last thing we expected to see was news of a sequel.
However, in the press release launching his new monthly comic anthology CLiNT, “Kick-Ass” creator Mark Millar states that he is readying “his sequel to the hit Kick-Ass movie in the first issue of the comic. “Kick-Ass 2: Balls To The Wall” has been scheduled for production in 2011 for a 2012 cinema release.”
Despite the completely terrible title, Millar does have intriguing plans for a proposed sequel that he discussed last month: “The second one, the sequel, is what if people tried to be bad guys as a reaction to the superheroes. And it’s just that simple. It’s just the idea of — the same way these guys were contacting each other on Facebook and everything and, you know, trying out superhero costumes — what if bad kids starting doing this?” But for geeks expecting fan favorite Hit Girl to return, they may have to wait as Millar said that while he has some big ideas for the character he is “…not sure when that’ll be, it might not even be the second one. In my head, I’ve got some ideas how it could go.”
But will this really happen? “Kick-Ass” was independently financed on a low budget and then acquired by Lionsgate for a cool $15 mil; with a domestic haul of only $42 million to date, it doesn’t seem to have done the gangbusters business the studio was looking for. We don’t see any studio jumping on board a sequel when the original already had problems pulling in an audience for its high-concept, hard-R fare. We suppose the film could be made independently again, but getting $15 million a second time around might prove to be a bit difficult. Not to mention that Millar’s track record with the truth isn’t particularly stellar (Fox basically called him out for lying about being offered the writing gig for “X-Men 4”), so we’re taking all of this with a grain of salt.
That said, a 2012 release isn’t inconceivable either and while Matthew Vaughn will be working on “X-Men: The First Class” for the immediate future, his calendar should have enough space to knock out another “Kick-Ass” in time for 2012 should this thing actually be real. But we’re going to remain cautious about this one until some more official word comes down.
–Kevin Jagernauth
