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Will We Ever Get a Third Kick-Ass Movie? The Latest From Film Series Creators
Sequel or reboot? The clock might be ticking toward fresh news on director Matthew Vaughn’s next Kick-Ass movie.
It’s been a full 10 years since Kick-Ass 2 (streaming here on Peacock!) released in theaters, building on the comedic anti-hero premise that director Matthew Vaughn and comic book creator Mark Millar first brought to the big screen with 2010’s Kick-Ass (also streaming on Peacock here).
Like its predecessor, Kick-Ass 2 arrived early to the adult-themed superhero movie party, priming fans for the kind of raunchy comic-book comedy that would eventually go on to lift Deadpool, at least for a minute, to the tip-top of the list of highest-grossing R-rated films of all time. Though Kick-Ass 2 didn’t match the box office numbers of the first film, the movie ended with its pair of heroes (Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Kick-Ass and Chloë Grace Moretz as Hit-Girl) alive and none the worse for wear, with plenty of momentum for what many fans assumed would be an eventual third installment in the hilariously subversive Kick-Ass movie-verse.
Will There Be a Kick-Ass 3? Here's What We Know
Fast-forward a decade, and the seeming inevitability of Vaughn and Millar bringing a Kick-Ass 3 to theaters has proven anything but. Despite periodic updates from both the cast and creators that telegraphed encouraging signals about progress on an elusive third Kick-Ass film, the mythic sequel never entered full-scale development.
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Vaughn’s work on the burgeoning Kingsman spy franchise has instead ended up claiming the lion’s share of the director’s focus in recent years, even as Millar and collaborator John Romita, Jr. continued evolving the Kick-Ass comic book storyline with the 2018 introduction of new hero Patience Lee — the successor to original Kick-Ass vigilante Dave Lizewski (played by Taylor-Johnson in the movies). That wrinkle might be significant for future Kick-Ass movie installments… but more on that in a moment.
Not too long ago, things looked hopeful that the wheels would again begin cranking to life on the Kick-Ass development front. In the span of a single month back in late 2021, Millar indicated that previous hopes for Kick-Ass 3, at least as fans anticipated it, were all but dead, while Vaughn, in a separate update, told Collider that a “big reboot” was in the works in two years’ time (i.e., around 2023), describing it as “so f-cking nuts that I can't talk about it.”
A reboot is of course a whole different animal than a proper Kick-Ass 3 sequel, leaving open the possibility that the Kick-Ass franchise could tap new comic book characters (like Patience Lee, perhaps) and new cast members. Approaching a restart to the franchise as a reboot rather than a sequel also could mean a whole new story setup, which swerves away from Taylor-Johnson and Moretz, who in the first two films was in the process of growing up onscreen.
Vaughn’s Collider comments came in December of 2021, and seemed to suggest just that kind of possibility. The director pointed out that rights to the franchise were expected to “revert back in two years” when the creative team would be free to “reboot it where people will be like, ‘he is insane.’” Though two years have passed with little fresh info since his reboot tease, Vaughn also dropped a couple of clues about what he had in mind, suggesting that Kick-Ass (the character) might still be front and center for any future film — even as he left open the possibility that the star could be either male of female.
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“So, I had this idea, and it was so nuts that I went, ‘Yeah, great. It’ll cause just as much controversy, and everyone will talk about it and as many people that love it will hate it,’” he told Collider. “But I’m not saying it hasn’t got the characters in it and won't have, you know. I'm just saying it's not what anyone could be imagining what it is. And I'm going to need one very, very brave actor or actress to play the new Kick-Ass because it will scare the s-it out of them.”
As of now, we’re closing in on the two-year mark since first Vaughn hinted that Kick-Ass could get a new lease on life as a reboot rather than a sequel. Looking at the director’s current schedule, there’s a definite “what’s-next” window looming in the near future: Vaughn’s currently working on Argylle, an upcoming Universal Pictures spy thriller whose casting lineup reads like an A-list acting roll call (Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson, Dua Lipa, Rob Delaney, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O'Hara, and Ariana DeBose).
Argylle is set to release in theaters on Feb. 2, 2024 — and then after that, who knows? While we wait for the next word on what, if any, future form the Kick-Ass franchise might take, at least we have the classics. Catch the original Kick-Ass as well as Kick-Ass 2, both streaming now on Peacock.
