Kick-Ass 2

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September 22, 2011 - With a sequel to the original comic book series hitting the stands, creator Mark Millar tells The LA Times' Hero Complex that he's already got the ending of the third and final miniseries planned and has since the very first Kick-Ass:

"Yes, “Kick-Ass” is a trilogy of books and there’s going to be two volumes of Hit-Girl too. And then that’s it. The whole, very complete, story has been in my head since the beginning. “Kick-Ass 2? ends on a bit of a cliffhanger and this all gets resolved in “Kick-Ass 3.” I’ve known the last page of “Kick-Ass 3? since I wrote Page 1 of the first series. Part of me loves the idea of this running and running like Spider-Man, but I also love the idea of it being finite and never being written or drawn by anyone other than me and Johnny. We can collect it into a nice box set, and hopefully it’ll just become a little classic that people discover in the future like the “Godfather” movies or “Lord of the Rings.” It would be easy to spin it off into lots of different books and hire other people to write them. It would be fast money because it outsells pretty much anything else out there right now. The first hardback, internationally, has sold almost a million copies everywhere from the USA to Israel to Japan and Italy and we’ve done five printings on the first issue of “Kick-Ass 2? alone, beating almost everything at Marvel and DC. But you have to stick to your guns and let a story have a natural length. You can’t get greedy. Just because something sells doesn’t mean you should milk it to death. “Kick-Ass 3? will absolutely be the last book and it’s a good ending. Plus, I’m lazy. If I have a choice between writing “Kick-Ass 4? or nipping off down at the pub I’m always going to choose the pub."

Meanwhile, on the movie front, a sequel could finally be moving forward:

"I obviously know more than I can say," Millar teases, "but I think people will be pretty happy with the conversations we’ve been having."

Millar also confirms that, while it's unlikely that Matthew Vaughn will return as a director, he could very well produce and potentially co-write a second film ala what George Lucas did with The Empire Strikes Back:

"Everybody involved suddenly got hired for a million different things," he explains, "and re-forming the band again would be impossible. Hopefully, we can use the same actors if and when we do a sequel, but getting Matthew [Vaughn] to direct or Jane to write a movie at this budget would be very difficult because they’re superstars now and they have projects of their own..."

Millar also admits that the young actors, who are all growing up fast are a limiting factor as well:

" But there’s a window because the actors are all supposed to be in high school and if this came out after 2013, for example, that window would have closed."

The original Kick-Ass, released in 2010, grossed $98 million worldwide. Vaughn, who directed that film, went on to direct this year's X-Men: First Class.