The holiday box office is always one of the busiest and most competitive frames of the year, and while there are a handful of titles all jockeying for position, The King’s Man isn’t one of them.
Spider-Man: No Way Home could be on course for a second weekend in the $100 million range, while animated sequel Sing 2 and blockbuster sci-fi actioner The Matrix Resurrections are locked in a back-and-forth battle for second place that either one could realistically end up winning.
That leaves Matthew Vaughn’s prequel out in the cold, where it’ll struggle to reach even $15 million. However, that hasn’t dampened the filmmaker’s enthusiasm one iota, and he revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that he’s already toying with potential ideas for further adventures.
“We thought about that for an advert, actually, but the answer is no. The story was actually in Kingsman: The Secret Service when Harry explains to Eggsy why, what, how, when. So it was a story that sort of wrote itself. You had that and you had the history of World War I. So it was combining those two things… Seeing Ralph [Fiennes] and Aaron [Taylor-Johnson] on a mission together with Polly (Gemma Arterton) and Shola (Djimon Hounsou)? I’m in! Those four together? Let’s go! I think it would be great.”
Vaughn is prepping Kingsman 3, has Argylle on the way, and voiced his desire to mount a succession of period-set prequels covering various points in history, so a direct follow up to The King’s Man stands every chance of getting lost in the shuffle given the sheer volume of ideas percolating in his head at any given moment.
Reviews have been polarizing to say the least, and the box office numbers are hardly encouraging, so The King’s Man could well end up as a one-and-done effort.