Taron Egerton explains why he's not in the next 'Kingsman' movie

By Kevin Polowy, Yahoo Entertainment

Last week, Taron Egerton told us that he won’t appear in the next Kingsman movie. The 29-year-old Welsh star, who was promoting his new spin on Robin Hood, was aware that he might have been delivering news “hot off the presses,” yet in clearly not wanting to divulge too much, he was unaware of how such news could be interpreted on the internet.

However, after the interview ran, other sites ran with headlines blasting the news that Egerton’s Eggsy was out of the franchise built around him in 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

Director Matthew Vaughn’s next Kingsman movie, called Kingsman: The Great Game, appears to be a prequel set well before the birth of his superspy, Eggsy. So while it’s technically the third Kingsman movie, it’s not the direct sequel or trilogy finale the director had originally planned. In other words, it’s not Kingsman 3, though that has previously been reported as the working title. Welcome to another round of confusing Hollywood prequels, sequels and reboot names.

“It slightly betrays some journalistic lack of research, how quickly that was picked up,” Egerton said about the widely circulating story while clarifying his comments to our colleagues at Yahoo Entertainment during a stop at their Los Angeles studios (watch above).

Egerton confirmed that Vaughn’s next Kingsman chapter is set about 100 years earlier. Various reports have placed actors Ralph Fiennes and Harris Dickinson in the prequel, with other names, such as Brad Pitt and Rachel Weisz, also rumoured.

“Even in the Kingsman universe, where anything goes, unless we can develop a time machine in the first act of the movie, I’m not going to be in it,” he said. “The idea for the film is really cool. It’s more of an origin story, like the first one.”

And to further clear the air, Egerton said that he would be game for another go at Eggsy should Vaughn move forward with a follow-up to The Golden Circle, which the filmmaker has indicated is in his plans.

“I am contractually obliged to be game for it,” he deadpanned. “But I’m very proud of my relationship with Matthew Vaughn. I’m very proud of the movies. … All jokes aside, I would love to come back and do a third one and wrap it up.”

After that third instalment is likely when Egerton would pump the breaks.

“And then I think [I’d] take a step away from it for a while. It feels like it’s been very of my 20s. And I don’t know that it should be of my 30s, just because I think the character’s inherently quite juvenile. And if he were to come back around later on, I think I’d need to get a little bit older. I think it would be more interesting to go away and come back to it,” he said. “There’s this generational thing with Kingsman, and I think if it has enough life in it, it’d be nice to explore that from a different angle and be a mentor to somebody else, maybe.”

Robin Hood is in cinemas 21 November.

Watch our interview with Taron Egerton:

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