“I am a pacifist, and the audience will understand within the first five minutes why. “I am unapologetically aristocratic,” says Fiennes of his character. But the beating heart of the first two films was the bond between teenage Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and his mentor Harry Hart (Colin Firth), and the new film revolves around a similar duo: teenage Conrad (Harris Dickinson) and his father the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes). Meaning The King’s Man will very much look the part. While touring the locations and sets, we’re assured that everything – from furniture to paintings to light fittings – is period correct. Petersburg locations, including the Tsar’s Palace and the Russian War Rooms. The nearby Palazzo Reale – home to the Turin Shroud – has been standing in for multiple St. The attention to detail is impressive, with roads around Turin’s River Po closed down and both the streets and extras dressed to look like 1914 Sarajevo. I’m sure the edit will be the wrestle between adventure, history and drama trying to get the balance so that all three are complementing each other.” We’re in a political climate which is very similar to the pre-WWI climate, where nobody thought there could be a war, then there was a war, then nobody understood why there was a war… There’s a lot of history in this. “I want kids to see when crazy people are running the world, things can get out of control very, very quickly. Proceedings commence during the Boer War, before progressing to the outbreak of WWI - meaning IGN’s visit also involves witnessing an attempt on the life of Archduke Ferdinand, with Turin’s city center doubling for Sarajevo.
It was an itch I wanted to scratch, and that was it.”Īs with Vaughn’s 2011 superhero prequel X-Men: First Class – which used the Cuban Missile Crisis as a major plot point – The King’s Man takes real-world events and lays a storyline over them. So then I had this idea: If I call it Kingsman, people might be interested in it, and the studio would feel a little safer that it’s got a franchise name on it. “But at the same time, I thought I’m never going to get this off the ground if I write what’s in my head. “I wanted to do a huge, epic action-adventure,” the writer-director explains.
Early in our interview, however, Vaughn reveals that the project initially had nothing to do with his lucrative franchise, which has thus far grossed more than $800 million worldwide.