ROYAL RUMBLE
Matthew Vaughn was revisiting John Huston’s classic adventure The Man Who Would Be King, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine, when the idea for the next instalment in the Kingsman franchise crystallised in his mind.
“I [previously] watched it as an audience member, and then I suddenly watched it now as a director,” Vaughn tells Total Film. “When I finished it, I was like, ‘Why is no one making movies like this anymore?’ They’re epic. They’re an adventure. They’re poignant. They’ve got messaging. It had it all, and, I think, the best Connery performance of all time. He’s just spellbinding. So…” He pauses. “That was it. I said, ‘Shit, I want to make a movie like that.’”
An old-fashioned epic. In this economy? Not exactly the easiest sell. “I thought about pitching to Hollywood, ‘Guys, I want to do an epic adventure like ,’” Vaughn continues. “Every door would be slammed in my face as usual, and they’d go, ‘No one wants to watch movies like that.’ So I was like, ‘Alright, well, how do I do this?’ And then I was thinking about as well, and I thought, look, if I do the history of the Kingsman – which I knew what it was when I wrote the first one – it felt like I’d get my cake,
