New York Comic Con was abuzz when during the Matthew Vaughn Spotlight panel that featured a Kick-Ass reboot announcement, shed light on an X-Men betrayal, an X-Men return, what it’s like crafting the spy thriller Argylle and building the third installment in the Kingsman franchise.
Vaughn took the stage in at the packed NYCC event for 45-minutes to speak about his experiences working with several film studios and projects he either directed or was involved with in some capacity. The discussion was also full of project updates, including that he is working on a musical, declaring the new Kick-Ass reboot will feature different characters from the film series.
“Kick-Ass sort of changed people’s perception of what a superhero film is at that time. So we’ll be doing it again. So it’s none of the characters from the other Kick-Ass. We’d like to bring them back after the reboot. This reboot is just going off on a tangent that I can’t really talk about now. But it’s fun.”
Vaughn also spoke about and previewed a clip of Argylle, his upcoming spy thriller starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Dua Lipa and more, at one point calling the process of breaking it a little “odd.”
“It was an odd time because when the book of Argylle arrived [as] manuscripts — there’s all this weird shit online saying it’s not real. It’s a real book — but I couldn’t get book one,” he recalled. “Breaking new IP, not many people will be bothered but the studios are sort of learning now, that maybe you guys, the audience, do want original films.”
He also shared the trailer only features footage from the movie’s first 28 minutes, and that “even what you see in the film isn’t quite the same as in the trailer. “We wanted to do something very meta. I just loved the idea of what would happen if a wizard went to J.K. Rowling in book three and said, ‘You know what? Wizards are real. Hogwarts is real. I’m real. I’m going to show you what it’s really like,’ and going on an adventure. We thought, ‘We’ll do that with spies,’” he continued while describing the film. “So, Elly Conway, I think, in real life will become a J.K. Rowling of spy movies, of spy novels.”
The trailer featured and action-packed fight scene with Henry Cavill and Sam Rockwell switching bodies as Howard’s Elle watches in shock. The editing was smooth and crisp as the fight choreography utilized a compact space in a moving train.
While discussing his work on the original Kick-Ass film, Vaughn revealed he “literally bet the house” on the film, taking out a mortgage to help finance it. He still failed to find distributors initially, with clips of the film at San Diego Comic-Con being the ultimate reason the film was released.
“It was scary because then we couldn’t get any distribution when finished because my agent at the time said, you know, it’s not really intelligent if everybody in Hollywood says no, don’t go make it because that doesn’t mean they’re gonna buy it. Thank God for Hall H, because we showed the movie, or they showed clips of the movie, after Avatar — so I really thought it was a screw. The fans went so crazy that the sheep of Hollywood decided that maybe there was something in here that the fans might like. So, they went for it.”
He spoke honestly about working with Hollywood executives, frequently highlighting office politics, revealing a troubling experience with the X-Men universe, including one of the major reasons he decided to walk away from the job.
“I went into one of the executives’ offices and I saw an X3 script, and I immediately knew it was a lot fatter. I was like, ‘What the hell is this draft?’ He went, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and I’m like, ‘No, no. I’m the director. I’m worrying about this draft. He wouldn’t tell me, so I grabbed it literally — it was like a crazy moment — opened the first page, and it said, ‘Africa. Storm. Kids dying of no water. She creates a thunderstorm and saves all these children.’”
Vaughn admitted he found it a “pretty cool idea,” but once he learned what was going to happen to the script, his relationship to the project soured. “[I went,] ‘What is this?’ [They said,] ‘Oh, it’s Halle Berry’s script. I went, ‘OK, because she hasn’t signed up yet.’ ‘But this is what she wants it to be, and once she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin,’” the director said, recounting the executive’s response. “I was like, ‘Wow, you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress who plays Storm? I’m out of here.’ So, I quit at that point.”
To learn more about the Matthew Vaughn panel, check out the audio from the event below.
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