“There’s an opportunity with Kingsman 2 to make it bigger and bolder and funnier and crazier,” says Matthew Vaughn of The Golden Circle, the follow-up to 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service. Given that movie featured Colin Firth going nutso in a church, and a sequence where a whole bunch of heads explode in technicolour unison, that’s quite a statement. “The church sequence, everyone wants something like that,” he says. “But we’ve got action sequences which are just as original but different.”
We won’t be able to fully assess the ‘bolder, funnier, crazier’ claims until September, when The Golden Circle hits cinemas. But bigger is pretty much a given. The sequel has added a raft of big-name heavy-hitters to the cast, thanks to the introduction of the new American secret agent organisation, Statesman. There’s Halle Berry as the Statesmen’s tech guru, Ginger, Jeff Bridges as their leader, Agent Champagne (or Champ, as he prefers people to call them), and Pedro Pascal as Agent Whiskey, who teams up with Taron Egerton’s Kingsman, Eggsy, to try to take down Julianne Moore’s Poppy, a megalomaniacal villain Vaughn describes as “America’s sweetheart gone wrong”.
And here, as part of two new images from the film, we get a new glimpse at Channing Tatum as one of those Statesmen, a cocky cowboy spy codenamed Agent Tequila. “They’re great characters,” says Vaughn of the new additions. “They’re multi-billionaires with huge jets, and their base is a giant distillery in Kentucky.” Which explains the alcohol-related nicknames, then. "We’ve got all this fun Americana and we’re combining it with the Englishness.”
Our other exclusive image shows Egerton returning as Eggsy, the boy from the streets made good as a gentleman spy. “We’ve got a huge arc for Eggsy,” says Vaughn. “Where does he go? What does he have to learn? And now he’s got a huge moral dilemma the audience will totally relate to.” Plus, if the presence of one Mr. Colin Firth is anything to go by, he may have to contend with an unexpected blast from the past in the seemingly back-from-the-dead form of Harry Hart. But to find out more about that, and indeed more on what the mysterious Golden Circle is, we’re going to have to wait a while…
Kingsman: The Golden Circle is out on 22 September.