Kick Ass comicbook creator Mark Millar has explained the reasons behind Matthew Vaughn abruptly abandoning directing duties on X-Men sequel Days of Future Past. Recent rumours were that he was clearing his schedule to allow him to take on directing the new Star Wars Trilogy for Disney. However Mark Millar has now confirmed that the real reason behind scaling back Vaughn’s involvement in the X-Men and Kick Ass sequels was a sense of urgency about their other new project Secret Service.

“What we’re doing is that Kick Ass 2 is filming now, and next year we’ll start production on Secret Service which I did with Dave Gibbons “Matthew and I have been talking about that for years. We thought Matthew was going to do X-Men first, but we found out there were actually a few imitators of Secret Service in the works… People are always trying to rip you off. Somebody will start to work on a spec screenplay about your idea.”

“There are three other projects I know of now about a James Bond kind of guy taking a street kid and turning him into a spy. Three screenplays were already going through Hollywood about this! So Matthew and I said, ‘Fuck this. We’re not letting anyone steal our ideas.’”

Fighting talk from the feisty author as Secret Service rushes into production. X -Men Days of Future Past will now be directed by Bryan Singer and is set for release 18 July 2014.