Well, filmmaker Matthew Vaughn just gave up the game-his endgame, really-in a new interview with “Happy Sad Confused” (yes, the gift that keeps on giving this week). The gist of his master plan? It’s ambitious and essentially doing for spies, with his company MARV, what Marvel has done for superheroes: an interconnected universe of espionage franchise, yes, all of his own.
“I just like the challenge of launching new I.P., it’s harder, but it’s more fun,” Vaughn began explaining. “With “Argylle,” we have the book, and we have an “Argylle 2” planned, so there is a universe and what we’re trying to do with MARV is sort of [what] Marvel [has done] for superheroes, we want to be for spies as well.” But what does that mean exactly? “So we’ve got “Kingsman” [franchise] on the right, we’ve got “Argylle” on the left, and we’ve got an idea for something in the middle, as well, and you’ve got all these competing franchises in a galaxy that one day might meet.”
Who knows what Vaughn has in mind for his third spy franchise, but he was open about his plans for both of his other ones. As for “Argylle,” he says unlike “The Kingsman” franchise, it would likely be PG-13 and he doesn’t think his film will earn an R. As for the status of “Kingsman 3,” Vaughn suggested a conclusion that perhaps points to a new generation. “We want to end the relationship—well, not end the relationship—but we want to conclude, shall we say, the relationship between with Harry [Colin Firth] and Eggsy [Taron Edgerton], and it’s 90% written,” Vaughn clarified.
But Vaughn’s big plans for MARV lie in finding the right distributors for his projects. “The issue I’m having, while Hollywood is figuring itself out, I just want to know who my partner on it will be, in a sense of distribution,” Vaughn said revealing that “Kingsman” is owned by MARV and 20th Century Studios and Disney were only his distributors and don’t own the property. “No, “Kingsman” is with MARV,” he continued. “We have all our films, we can do what we want with that, and what we want to do with “Argylle,” so I want to make sure… you can’t build a universe if you’re at three different studios, so, it just creates problems so it’s better to [have] it all together and you want people who are protecting the assets, even when they’re not making the asset.
“And that’s why we want to get “Argylle” finished because we are planning this spy universe, so we have to pick our distributor, I can’t distribute movies. So that’s one of the things that MARV’s deciding at the moment,” Vaughn said of why “Kingsman” is delayed and where it could go. And what about his future plans for the “Kingman” franchise (after all, there was talk of TV spin-offs and “Statesman” spin-off and all these ambitious ideas)? Well, first off, Vaughn revealed, the 2021 period-piece “The King’s Man” film with Ralph Fiennes was supposed to be a TV spin-off (“then I got dragged into making it as a film”), but didn’t say much more other than, “Yeah, we do want to do TV with [the franchise].”
So it’s all spies always in Matthew Vaughn’s future plans. What’s first in line after “Argylle”? Maybe that depends on how Vaughn’s latest does in theaters when it debuts on February 2, 2024.
