“What’s the story on “Kung Fury 2: The Movie?” That’s been on the minds of countless fans of 2015’s break-out martial arts comedy short film “Kung Fury” for years, with near total radio silence on the long-awaited follow-up to the Kickstarter-funded hit ever since. KFK even included it in the number two spot on our list of 2020’s Most Anticipated Martial Arts Movies, unsuspecting of the void that Kung Fury’s return has fallen into. However, out of the blue and quite unexpectedly, a sizzle reel of “Kung Fury 2” leaked online, along with an update from “Kung Fury” director and leading man David Sandberg on the status of the sequel – and it’s unfortunately not an update of the exhilarating sort that “Kung Fury” fans have been waiting to hear.
“Kung Fury 2” Has Been Stuck In Legal Limbo
When “Kung Fury” took the internet by storm in 2015, nobody ever anticipated that David Sandberg’s feature-length follow-up “Kung Fury 2: The Movie” would vanish into a black hole of uncertainty for over a decade. However, there are understandable albeit complex legal reasons for the hold-up, as explained by Sandberg himself in an interview with Variety.
In a nutshell, “Kung Fury 2” was filmed in 2019, and was partially funded by Creasun Entertainment USA, the American wing of the Chinese visual effects house Creasun Media. However, per Sandberg in his Variety interview, “Once we started getting to VFX, things started to really slow down — and things became a bit weird…And then it turned out that our Chinese financier had basically stopped all payments.” Following multiple subsequent lawsuits, “Kung Fury 2” has essentially been locked in a legal tug of war between Creasun on one side and Sandberg and the movie’s production team on the other, with Sandberg telling Variety “They just kind of stonewalled every single attempt to solve the issue…And it was just really heartbreaking for me as an artist who’s worked on this for years. And there are so many people who have poured their hearts into this, and I feel super terrible for them.” Despite these difficulties, “Kung Fury 2” has been essentially completed save for some additional visual effects work to get it over the finish line, with Sandberg giving a rough completion estimate of $5 to $10 million to Variety.
“Kung Fury” Is A Hilarious Spoof Of ‘80s Cop Movies (& The ‘80s In General)
Right from its debut in 2015, the “Kung Fury” Cinematic Universe is one that doesn’t even try to take itself seriously. Replete with dinosaur cops, time-travel, the Norse God of Thunder Thor (sans his Avengers membership card), and Adolf Hitler as its arch-villain, “Kung Fury” embraces silliness like a duck to water with plenty of martial arts fun at its core. Combining the “Looney Tunes” zaniness of “Shaolin Soccer” with the decade-specific martial arts cop parody sensibilities of “Black Dynamite” with a distinctively 80s-style gloss, “Kung Fury” is a loving send-up and tribute to its era, its genres, and its tone all in one over-the-top package.
“Kung Fury 2” has everything that made its predecessor a break-out YouTube hit and then some between Michael Fassbender’s Dirty Harry-esque rogue cop Colt Magnum, Arnold Schwarzenegger as none other than a bazooka-wielding President Arnold Schwarzengger, and David Hasselhoff as the man-car hybrid, Hal 9000. “Kung Fury 2” clearly has a lot of unseen fireworks of the silliest sort tied up in its legal limbo, and the latest news on it has no doubt left many begging the question of whether the world will ever get to see any of it.
When Will The World Finally Get To See “Kung Fury 2”?
While the blockage to the release of “Kung Fury 2” is doubtlessly a sad one for both fans of the original and the makers of the feature-length sequel, the amount of attention the leaked sizzle reel and the information about the movie’s production is gaining online could give it some momentum for the relevant parties to come together and settle what needs to be settled for it to be released. As the famed #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign is an eternal reminder of, finished or nearly finished movies held back from release by studio politics, financial issues, or other roadblocks can most certainly see the light of day if fans of the property show enough support to make it happen. That very occurrence also happened recently with Ketchup Entertainment gaining the release rights to “Coyote vs. Acme” after it was nearly shut in the vault forever by Warner Bros. Discovery for a tax write-off, while the Jackie Chan-John Cena team-up “Hidden Strike” also eventually debuted on Netflix after seemingly being consigned to vanish into the ether. Judging from the reactions to the “Kung Fury 2” news online, that noise has already been heard loud and clear.
Of course, with that said, “Kung Fury” fans simply voicing their support for the release of “Kung Fury 2” alone won’t be enough to give it a path to release. The movie’s aforementioned financial struggles and behind-the-scenes legal battles would need to be resolved in order for “Kung Fury 2” to finally be released as Sandberg had intended. Nonetheless, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and hopefully the necessary combination of the two comes together in the near future for “Kung Fury 2: The Movie” to finally bring its 80s-drenched kung fu cop zaniness to fans around the world, even if it’d be several years later than intended.
