Career
Aged 25, Vaughn produced a low-budget thriller, The Innocent Sleep (1996), starring Annabella Sciorra and Michael Gambon. He continued as a producer on his friend Guy Ritchie's film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The film was a critical, popular and financial success, earning Vaughn and Ritchie £9 million each. Vaughn later produced Ritchie's Snatch and Swept Away.
Vaughn made his directorial debut in 2004 with Layer Cake. The film was well received and its success led to Vaughn being tapped to direct X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), but he dropped out only two weeks before filming began. Subsequently, he said the film was "pretty good" given the limited time they had to make it, but he was critical of Brett Ratner's direction of the film. For his next project, he co-wrote and directed Stardust, followed by a movie adaptation of Mark Millar's Kick-Ass in 2010. Vaughn directed and co-wrote the first film in the prequel trilogy of the X-Men film universe titled X-Men: First Class (2011). Vaughn was signed to return to the series as director of the sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), but dropped out in favour of Bryan Singer, who had directed the first two films in the original trilogy, X-Men and X2. Vaughn remained attached to the film by co-writing the script.
Vaughn's next directorial project, was Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), an adaptation of the comic book The Secret Service created by Millar and Dave Gibbons from a concept by Millar and an initially uncredited Vaughn himself (Vaughn being credited as the comic's co-creator on all republications since 2014). The film was scripted by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, and produced by Vaughn's production company Marv Films. Vaughn returned to direct, produce, and co-write the Kingsman sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which was released in theaters in September 2017. Vaughn also directed and provided the story for The King's Man, the third installment in the franchise serving as a prequel to the original film. Delayed from November 2019 due to both the schedule shuffle following Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic, the film was released on 22 December 2021.
In March 2017, Collider reported that Vaughn was top choice to direct Man of Steel 2; in September of that year, Vaughn confirmed that he was in negotiations with the studio to helm the project. By March 2019, Vaughn stated that discussions with Warner Bros. had ended, and he was no longer involved with development of the film.
Vaughn began working on spy film Argylle in 2021, an original story written by Jason Fuchs and starring an ensemble cast including Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Bryan Cranston and John Cena. The film premiered in January 2024, and was released by Universal Pictures and Apple Original Films.
In January 2024, Vaughn announced that he would be producing a third Kick-Ass film, titled Stuntnuts Does School Fight, directed by his longtime stunt coordinator Damien Walters in his feature film debut, which had secretly already been greenlit and had completed filming. also announcing two further films in the Kick-Ass franchise to be in development, to be produced by him as a trilogy, under the working titles Vram and Kick-Ass.
In April 2025, Vaughn announced his involvement in a new film production studio, "UR•MARV", in collaboration with Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
