Summary

Director Matthew Vaughn originally intended for The King’s Man to be a TV series released for the World War I anniversary, inspired by the speech about the founding of the Kingsman agency to prevent future wars. The decision to make The King’s Man a prequel was influenced by the idea that a prequel should start with a different journey, with the death of Conrad serving as the birth of Kingsman, leading to a more serious first half and a lighter ending. The King’s Man may have been more successful as a TV series since the movie generated strong streaming viewership and was better received by general audiences than by professional critics, suggesting that the original concept might have been a winning strategy.

Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn has explained why the prequel movie The King’s Man was made before the long-awaited Kingsman 3. Serving as the prequel to both 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle, 2021’s The King’s Man charted the formation of the Kingsman private secret intelligence organization during the events of World War I. Initially planned to be released in 2019, the movie was pushed back several times owing to both Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox and the later impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While hosting a panel at this year’s New York Comic Con with a Screen Rant correspondent in attendance, Vaughn revealed that his original intention was for The King’s Man to be a television series released for the anniversary of World War I. He also revealed that the impetus for the prequel was born from the speech in the first movie about wealthy aristocrats losing their children and founding the Kingsman agency as a means of preventing future wars. Check out his comments below:

The King’s Man was meant to be a TV series, and the anniversary of World War I, and what happened, and what was going on in the world, and I always love the speech from the movie about the founding of the Kingsman about aristocratic rich people losing their children and then founding the Kingsman and giving the money to an agency to make sure a war would never break out again. I always thought that was fascinating, and I think history’s really important, and I wanted to do something where historical events go back to the masses and make people look up the characters and just learn that we’ve made mistakes in the past and let’s try and learn from them and not repeat them…The thing is, if you’re going to do a prequel, if you’re going to do a prequel to Bond or Superman, you don’t start with Bond being 007 or Superman flying, he’s gotta start somewhere different for the journey to begin, and then the ending you get there. So I always said the death of Conrad is the birth of Kingsman, so that’s why the first half is a bit more serious, and by the end, we’re trying to lighten it up.

Would The King’s Man Have Been More Successful As A TV Series?

With the first two Kingsman movies each grossing over $400 million worldwide, hopes for Vaughn’s prequel were high when the project was first announced. However, when the movie finally made its theatrical debut after a string of continuous delays, reviews were mixed, and the movie struggled to attract a fraction of the box office takings of its predecessors.

While several factors could be blamed for The King’s Man’s less-than-stellar performance, not least of which was the timing of its eventual release and a brief theatrical window before its streaming availability, the prequel ultimately failed to live up to the considerable success enjoyed by the other movies in the franchise. Despite its box office woes, The King’s Man generated strong streaming viewership numbers, and general audiences seemed to warm to the film far more than professional critics.

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Given the manner in which Vaughn’s prequel found greater success on streaming platforms, it is likely that his original concept of developing The King’s Man as a television series would have been a far more successful strategy. Moreover, it could have left the franchise’s big-screen adventures to Taron Egerton’s beloved Gary “Eggsy” Unwin and the modern-day Kingsman agency. With Vaughn now looking to return for Kingsman 3, it will be interesting to see if a return to the present will serve to reinvigorate the franchise.