Matthew Vaughn is out to turn Argylle’s post-credits scene into a franchise

Matthew Vaughn’s new spy romp Argylle delights in crashing two fictional layers collectively: The world of spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) and the world inhabited by her creation, the James Bond-like Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill), mix into one another till audiences don’t know what’s actual and which manner is up. There’s additionally the truth that the film is reportedly impressed by a novel written by a actual writer known as Elly Conway. In the event you sat by way of the film and also you’re nonetheless confused on a few factors, you aren’t alone.

We’re right here to assist you to kind out a few issues, together with what future the Argylle franchise has, whether or not it has any connections to Vaughn’s Kingsman films, and the implications of its post-credits scene.

Does Argylle have a post-credits scene?

Sure! Within the mid-credits slot, earlier than the total credit roll, we get what seems to be a teaser for a sequel… kind of. It’s difficult.

A title card informs us that the scene is set 20 years sooner than the film we’ve simply watched. It’s shot in black and white. A younger, dark-haired man enters a nation pub known as The King’s Man, a pointed reference to Vaughn’s sequence of Kingsman films. He goes up to the barman and asks for a “cosmopolitan with a twist.” The barman scoffs, saying his institution isn’t a cocktail bar or a nightclub.

The younger man solutions: “Hold the Cointreau. And the cranberry juice. And the vodka. Just the twist.” It’s a foolish line, maybe mocking James Bond’s famously fastidious “shaken, not stirred” order — however it’s additionally code. The barman arms the younger man a fancy field containing a pistol and asks the younger man’s title. He reveals that he’s Aubrey Argylle — the character from Elly Conway’s books, performed by Henry Cavill within the film.

“Argylle: Book One — The Movie — Coming Soon,” reads textual content on the display.

Is Argylle getting a sequel, then?

I advised you this is able to be difficult.

As a result of Elly Conway — Bryce Dallas Howard’s character in Argylle — is an writer who writes spy fiction about Aubrey Argylle, this scene may simply be an in-joke: a trailer for a film that exists in Argylle’s fictional universe, tailored from the fictional Elly’s fictional guide.

However! Elly Conway is additionally a actual writer (maybe — extra on that later) who wrote a actual guide known as Argylle (which you can buy) that supposedly impressed the film. So this might be a trailer for a actual film adaptation of that guide. A straight adaptation, quite than the Argylle film we now have, which is a metafictional tackle it that makes use of among the characters and turns the writer into a character herself.

It turns out that this is the plan, in accordance to Vaughn — if he will get the inexperienced mild from Apple and Common to make extra Argylle films. He doesn’t have that inexperienced mild but.

“That would be nice, but that’s up to the audience, it’s not up to us,” Vaughn advised Polygon after a London screening of the film. “The plan — touch wood, touch wood — would be Book One, which is written and selling. The book didn’t write itself, you know. […] It’s a really good book.”

Are there franchise plans past that? Sure! Vaughn, in sometimes mischievous type, plans to observe Argylle: Guide One with a third film that may truly be Argylle 2. Are you following this?

“So [after] Book One, then we would definitely do Argylle 2 the movie, which continues with the characters and the meta craziness,” Vaughn stated. Presumably meaning this third movie would return to the world of the fictional Elly Conway and Sam Rockwell’s “real-world” spy, Aidan. “We’ve got some really fun ideas for that. And if we pull both of those off, then who knows what’s next?”

Will Henry Cavill play Argylle within the sequel?

The usage of the younger actor within the post-credits scene would possibly elevate questions on whether or not the function of Aubrey Argylle might be recast for the potential Argylle: Guide One — The Film. The guide offers with Argylle’s origins as a spy, and initially, the character is described as being in his early 20s. (Cavill is 40.)

Cavill, for one, hopes he’ll nonetheless be within the function within the subsequent movie. “I hope so,” he advised Polygon in an interview. “A recast of Argylle would be a fairly profound statement against me! In an ideal world, that would not be a voluntary departure on my part.”

However maybe Cavill is speaking about Argylle 2, and never Argylle: Guide One. Or maybe he’s acquired the 2 potential follow-up films combined up, and who may blame him?

Who wrote the Argylle guide? Was it Taylor Swift? And is the film actually primarily based on the guide?

Argylle was initially introduced as an adaptation of a novel by first-time novelist Elly Conway, however questions on its authorship have been first raised by The Hollywood Reporter in 2022 when the publication discovered it was unable to confirm her existence. Suspicions have been additional aroused when it turned out that Elly could be a character within the film. There was even a fashionable conspiracy principle that the books’ actual writer was pop star Taylor Swift, due to a variety of coincidences, together with the breed of Elly’s cat within the film being the identical as Swift’s. (And no, in case you’re questioning, Taylor Swift is not in Argylle, although Dua Lipa is.)

Vaughn has categorically denied the Swift connection in interviews, and maintains that there is a actual Elly Conway. Nonetheless, the movie doesn’t carry an “adapted from” credit score, with the one writing credit score going to screenwriter Jason Fuchs. It appears potential that the guide was written after or alongside the film, partly as a advertising and marketing ploy and partly as materials for future potential sequels. Is Elly Conway a pseudonym for Fuchs, Vaughn himself, or one other ghostwriter?

Picture: Common Photos/Apple Unique Movies

Requested by Polygon which got here first, the guide or the film, Vaughn caught to his story, however in a method that’s open to interpretation.

“They were born at the same time,” he stated. “Literally, really. What the movie came out of, really, was watching Romancing the Stone with my daughters. And they said, ‘Well, you should make a movie like this, please, for us.’ Then I got a script. And then I got a manuscript. And then the whole thing just merged together in this sort of very meta universe. And then I got really excited about doing something different, and taking what I call fictional fantasy spies, realistic real spies, and then having an author in the middle where the worlds just collide. And then a new illusion appears.”

Vaughn factors out that he’s no stranger to growing diversifications on this uncommon, synchronous manner. “I did the same thing with Kick-Ass. Literally the same thing. Mark Millar and I were writing… Well, he was technically writing the comic, and we [Vaughn and co-screenwriter Jane Goldman] were writing the script… For me, this is actually quite normal. But other people are like, What are you doing?”

Is Argylle set in the identical universe because the Kingsman films?

Is the title of the pub within the post-credits scene — The King’s Man — simply an Easter egg nodding to Vaughn’s three Kingsman films? Or does it suggest that Argylle exists in the identical universe because the fictional secret service of well dressed, very violent spies run out of a Savile Row tailors store?

“Well, they both exist in my head, so that is the universe!” Vaughn joked to Polygon, earlier than hinting that there could also be a additional hyperlink. “I will say that Argylle wears very well-cut suits. That’s all I’ll say for the time being.”

Actually, Vaughn has beforehand advised that he would possibly hyperlink Argylle with Kingsman and a third, unnamed franchise in an overarching cinematic universe of spies. In October 2023, he advised the Happy Sad Confused podcast: “There is a universe, and what we’re trying to do with Marv [Vaughn’s production company] is sort of, as Marvel is to superheroes, we want to be to spies as well. So we’ve got Kingsman on the right, Argylle’s on the left, and then we’ve got an idea for something in the middle as well. Then you’ve got these sort of competing franchises in a galaxy that, one day, might meet.”