It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? Especially at the (non-existent) box office. We’ve mostly been waiting to finally see Marvel’s Black Widow finally arrive on the big screen, but lo and behold there’s another action franchise right around the corner. In this new look at The King’s Man, we take a glimpse at the past, present, and future of this tailored spy service.
Disney’s 20th Century Studios has shared a new video for The King’s Man, which serves as a prequel to the Taron Egerton-led The Kingsman series. Based on the graphic novel The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, the WWI-based story introduces the origins of the King’s Man spy agency. In the video, which you can watch below, director Matthew Vaughn calls this story the “foundation” of the franchise.
The movie stars Ralph Fiennes as Orlando Oxford, one of the original members of the King’s Man agency — alongside Shola (Djimon Hounsou) and Polly (Gemma Arterton). Oxford brings in a protégé named Conrad (Harris Dickinson), and just in time — as a bunch of history’s greatest criminal masterminds have banded together to kill millions of people. This group of ne’er-do-wells includes Rhys Ifans as Rasputin, who looks fucking badass while doing his sword-fighting thing, frankly.
We’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time — heck, we interviewed the cast and crew at New York Comic Con 2019 in anticipation of the release! The King’s Man was originally scheduled to come out on November 15, 2019, but then got moved a few times, ultimately landing on March 2020. Bad timing, as that was when the novel coronavirus was starting to spread in the United States.
It’s now set to come out on January 1, 2022 in Australia.
And really, what better way is there to celebrate the holiday season than watching a bunch of spies in suits jump on and off old-timey cars? Sounds like heaven to me.