Trivia / Argylle

• All-Star Cast: The cast includes big names like Henry Cavill, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cena and Sam Rockwell, to Bryce Dallas Howard, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O'Hara and Richard E. Grant, to relatively new names like Dua Lipa^note To acting anyway; she had just appeared in the Barbie movie and Ariana DeBose.^note While already a veteran of the musical stage and already has been in some film roles like West Side Story and the primary lead of Wish, this film marks her maiden foray into the action genre.
• Billing Displacement: The posters bill Henry Cavill as the main actor before Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard. In the actual movie, Elly Conway (Dallas) and Aidan Wilde (Rockwell) are respectively the Protagonist and the Deuteragonist. Argylle (Cavill) doesn't have much screen time, and isn't a real person in-universe (supposedly); being the hero of successful in-story novels, his appearances are either a few Show Within a Show sequences (in scenes Elly is writing or reading her novels) or Elly having hallucinations of him in place of Aidan or herself during fight scenes. Notably, the end credits put Cavill way down the cast list.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $200 million, Box Office: $45,207,275 (Domestic), $95,355,729 (Worldwide). This is the third time that an Apple theatrical release in collaboration with major studios has bombed (all three films had a budget in the $200 million ballpark).
• Creator-Driven Successor: The film is pretty clearly a Spiritual Successor to the Kingsman films, being a Matthew Vaughn-directed spy film that's sprinkled with Affectionate Parody of the genre, includes some of its cast (Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Boutella), boasts the same kind of flashy action setpieces (particularly the climax), throws a seemingly normal person into the world of espionage, and has many a Plot Twist and double-twists. Kingsman is even directly referenced in The Stinger.
• Defictionalization: There really is an Argylle novel (a real life version of the in-universe books, not a novelization of the film) released shortly before the film. Its then-anonymous authors published it under the pen name "Elly Conway", whose alleged biography is based on the film's heroine.
• Dueling Works: Released a few months before Henry Cavill's other big spy film of 2024 by another stylish British director.
• Fake Brit: Catherine O'Hara is Canadian-American, and her character is British.
• Playing Against Type: Usually cast as the Affably Evil villain or Plucky Comic Relief, Sam Rockwell here is now a proper action hero.
• Production Posse:
  • In front of the camera, director Matthew Vaughn reunites with Stardust cast member Henry Cavill and Kingsman: The Secret Service villains Samuel L. Jackson and Sofia Boutella.
  • Behind the camera, Vaughn reunites with his cinematographer for Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle, George Richmond, as well as his X-Men: First Class editor, Lee Smith.
• Real-Life Relative: Chip, the cat that plays Alfie in the movie (its non-CGI parts at least), is actually owned by director Matthew Vaughn's wife, supermodel Claudia Schiffer◊.
• Spoiled by the Cast List: In the run-up to the film's release, it was discovered that the question of the real Agent Argylle's identity was answered by a production announcement from 2021.
• Viral Marketing: The film was originally promoted as an adaptation of a yet-to-be-released novel by first-time author Elly Conway with Conway and the book even getting their own page on Penguin Random House's website. "Elly Conway" turned out to be Bryce Dallas Howard's character in the film, but "Argylle" is in fact an actual novel that was released a few days before the film (a Defictionalization of the in-universe books), with the latter's mid-credits scene indicating that it will be adapted as the second film. In February 2024, it was revealed that the book was written by British authors Terry Hayes and Tammy Cohen.

---