Matthew Vaughn (birthname: Matthew Allard Robert Vaughn, and then re-named Matthew Allard de Vere Drummond) is a protégé of and producer for British filmmaker
Guy Ritchie who has melded that director’s sensibility with properties in the Marvel Studios stable, such as the
X-Men franchise. Vaughn’s big-screen debut was as a 25-year-old Los Angeles-based producer on
The Innocent Sleep (1996), co-starring Annabella Sciorra and Michael Gambon, and on Ritchie’s acclaimed debut,
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), with Vinnie Jones,
Jason Statham, and Sting.
Vaughn made his directorial debut (and also as producer) in the London crime thriller,
Layer Cake (2004), starring a pre-Bond Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, Sienna Miller, Gambon, and Tom Hardy, and released by Columbia Pictures. Matthew Vaughn was director/co-writer/producer of his Neil Gaiman adaptation,
Stardust (2007), starring Claire Danes, Michelle Phillips,
Robert De Niro, Miller,
Ricky Gervais, Rupert Everett, and Peter O’Toole, and grossing $137 million worldwide.
Vaughn’s first superhero movie (again as director/co-writer/producer) was
Kick-Ass (2010), with Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Mark Strong, and
Nicolas Cage, premiering at the South by Southwest film festival, and generating both controversy (for language and violence) and good box-office ($96 million globally). Vaughn was writer-producer of the thriller,
The Debt (2010), directed by John Madden and starring Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain,
Sam Worthington, Ciarán Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson, grossing over double costs ($45.6 million) for global distributors Focus Features/Universal/Miramax.
Over the following ten years, Matthew Vaughn was director, writer, and producer on two franchises--
X-Men and
Kingsman. This started with Vaughn as director/co-writer of the $353- 353-million-grossing
X-Men: First Class (2011), the series’ fifth installment co-starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon Vaughn shifted to producer (as well as a credited story writer) for the follow-up, the Bryan Singer-directed
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), with new cast members High Jackman,
Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Elliot Page, Ian McKellan, and
Patrick Stewart, and more than doubling the previous movie’s return with a $746 million gross.
Vaughn co-wrote with Dave Gibbons the story concept (based on Mark Millar’s comic,
The Secret Service) for
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), and directed and produced the first movie in the series starring Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Taron Egerton, and Michael Caine, and earning a robust $414.4 million global gross.
Matthew Vaughn was again director/writer/producer of the sequel,
Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), with new cast members Julianne Moore, Berry, Elton John, Channing Tatum, and Jeff Bridges, and matched the preceding movie’s box office despite indifferent reviews. Vaughn returned as director/writer/producer of the prequel,
The King’s Man (2021), with a new cast starring Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans,
Harris Dickinson, and
Djimon Hounsou, but under-performing commercially with a weak $126 million return for 20
th Century Fox.
Vaughn returned as director-producer to the spy action-comedy mode but in an original vehicle,
Argylle (2024), with
Henry Cavill,
Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa,
Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston,
John Cena, and
Samuel L. Jackson, and released by Universal Pictures (in theaters) and Apple TV+ (streaming).
Matthew Vaughn has served as producer only on the following theatrically released movies:
Snatch (2000),
Mean Machine (2001),
Swept Away (2002),
Harry Brown (2009),
Kick-Ass 2 (2013),
Fantastic Four (2015),
Eddie the Eagle (2016),
Rocketman (2019),
Silent Night (2021), and
Tetris (2023).
