Suit' Em Up

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Welsh actor and Kingsman: The Secret Service breakout star Taron Egerton owes Bryan Singer a big favour. Ish.

How so?

Let’s go back to a few moons ago when producer-turned-director Matthew Vaughn was expected to follow-up 2011’s X-Men First Class with X-Men: Days of Future Past — expected being the operative word. Turns out Bryan Singer had the first option to direct the sequel, but should he decline to do it, Vaughn was next in line. This arrangement didn’t sit well with Vaughn.

“Having to wait to see if Bryan wanted to do it was just weird,” said Vaughn in a 2015 interview. “I want to be in control of my destiny, not waiting. I felt like Bryan had let me play with his toys and I’d had a good time but it was time to give them back.” So he bailed on the mutants and focused on spies instead in Kingsman: The Secret Service, a passion project he and veteran comic book scribe and Kick-Ass collaborator Mark Millar had been working on for years. It was Vaughn’s love letter to the spy movies — the early Bond flicks, The Avengers (not the Marvel one) and The Man from UNCLE — he was raised on, and then some.

“I realised Kingsman had to be done now,” he said. “The spy movie [genre] needed to be reinvented. And it was my franchise.” Kingsman: The Secret Service introduced the eponymous covert agency where the operatives not only have a particular set of skills, they also have an impeccably snazzy wardrobe.