With a $400 million worldwide box office back in February of this year, a welcome number for an original work, Kingsman: The Secret Service has been expected to get a sequel. There’ve been a few roadblocks in the way to getting there though, notably as the main star of it with Taron Egerton is a modestly hot commodity after it. He signed on for the Robin Hood: Origins film and ended up in some contest filming schedule issues with the Kingsman sequel that’s being written by director Matthew Vaughn with Jane Goldman. That took some wrangling but it’s all been smoothed out and now the sequel is set for a June 16th, 2017 release. It’ll begin filming next April – though no director is set yet as Vaughn has been eying a number of projects while writing this one.
A summer 2017 release date certainly raises expectations but also increases the faith that the studio has behind it, moving it from the deep winter to something that will get more people out. This release date currently has just Cars 3 debuting that weekend. The week before sees World War Z 2 while the week after has Wonder Woman. Of course, drop back to May 26th, 2017 and you have Star Wars Episode VIII as well…
Kingsman was a great movie. Alas, for me, the best part (no, not the “Princess Joke”, as much as that was a great sendup of so many Bond tropes), was how much fun Colin Firth was in his role, which, sadly means he’s unlikely to appear in a sequel. (Flashback, please?).
I hope Firth returns. The man might not be an “action star” but he rocked the role, AFAIK did much of his own stuntwork and promoted the movie with seemingly genuine enthusiasm.
I have to say that I enjoyed the movie more without the (IMHO awkward) Princess Joke.
I wonder how the bluray plans for the first one will shape up. I recall that the current bluray had features pulled, implying a better edition down the line, and now it has been selected to be one of the first 4K “Ultra HD” blurays…
The writer and director are the most important parts as most Hollyweird types won’t be able to make a movie that lives up to the first one.