“Kick-Ass” is already making big splashes in the comic book adaptation world with the film and it’s Hit-Girl character, played by Chloe Moretz, generating massive buzz. Speaking with IGN, the graphic novel’s creator, Mark Millar, has taken to discussing his plans for a film sequel which lie in his gestating comic follow up.
“In a nutshell, the idea of ‘Kick-Ass’ was what would happen if people in the real world try to be superheroes and that informed the first three issues which was the first movie,” the writer explains. “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?”
“You’ve got this kind of horrible ‘A Clockwork Orange’ kind of scenario going where these kids are happy-slapping. They’re with their mobile phones, dressed up as villains doing horrible things to people, recording it and putting it online. And just that becoming massively viral all over the world. These superheroes who are maybe 15 year schoolboys having to try do something about it, trying to stop them with the police trying to close them all down, you know? So that’s probably going to be basis of the ‘Kick-Ass’ sequel.”
Millar also affirmed that the franchise would never go down the path of superpowers and could “never even have Batman style stuff ’cause really all that Bruce Wayne stuff doesn’t exist either: those bulletproof capes and everything, gyrocopters. We want to keep just stuff we can buy on Ebay.”
“We’ve always had a massive confidence in this even though everything could have gone wrong and every stage,” Millar continued. “We’ve always just thought ‘what would we do for ‘Kick-Ass 2’ and ‘Kick-Ass 3” when we didn’t have the money to make ‘Kick-Ass 1’. It was ridiculous really… we were talking about movie two and movie three even after 7 rejections from the big studios.”
“The idea I had in my head [about Hit-Girl] is a bit like — imagine ‘A History Of Violence,’ David Cronenberg’s movie with an eleven year old girl. You know the idea of someone whose been through a lot of stuff and all that. And she’s an amazing fighter and everything but she has to repress it all and try and live a normal life and pretend she’s just another normal kid. I like the idea of her going to birthdays parties and clowns coming in and things you know? She’s sitting playing with her Bratz and things with her friends but she’s into the other stuff. This isn’t really her but she’s having to maintain this fake life and whenever she does, at the some in the future, cut loose again, it’s going to be amazing. So I’m 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 whether or not a “Kick-Ass 2” will make to the big screen will depend on how well (or not) the film does this weekend. Tracking for the buzzed about the film is disappointingly low. Millar, director Matthew Vaughn and co-scribe Jane Goldman struggled to get the project off its feet in the first place. With a screenplay hated by every studio they approached, the trio persisted, resorting to outside-the-system financing methods, building their own buzz before selling it to Lionsgate. While geeks are practically foaming at the mouth to see the film, mainstream crowds seem non-plussed and if that lack of interest is felt at the box office, the creators may have to take inspiration from their own movie and upload any potential sequel to YouTube themselves.
All that said, it has put everyone involved on the Hollywood radar: Millar’s upcoming graphic novel “Nemesis” — which centers on a villain described as what would happen if Bruce Wayne became the Joker — is already attracting interest while Vaughn is finding himself a wanted man in Hollywood for a change.