Ten Years After ‘Kung Fury’ Rocked Cannes, Director David Sandberg Unwraps ‘Heartbreaking’ Legal Chaos That Left Feature-Length Sequel in Limbo

A few days before the Cannes 2025 Film Festival began, a filtered rotating reel called «Kung Fury 2» caused something online.

The 10-minute promotion, upload to an anonymous YouTube account (and was eliminated less than a day later), showed a madness of action comedy and martial arts in a wildly exaggerated wild tribute and especially bonkers at 80, with Michael Fassbender as a renegade with an impressive Mullet and Arnold Schwarznger as a Nazi-Fighting US President.

While for many the answer was much of the «WTF was that», for others it was a very welcome reminder of a long variety movie that had disappeared by view.

«Kung Fury 2» was announced for the first time in Cannes in 2015, where the original «Kung Fury», a 30 -minute green short film on the green screen on «Kung Fu Cop» that goes back in the time of Miami of the 1980s to defeat Kung Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, became one of the breakouts plus rhythms.

«I have such good memories of that time, not only Cannes, but the whole process that leads to him,» says writer/director David Sandberg, who also plays Kung Fury and whose greatly successful Kickstarter campaign saw investors literally travel from the whole world to his home in the zurra zone to help in the short. «The passion was in the DNA of the project. All who worked on it shared the passion.»

In Cannes, «Kung Fury» premiered in the fifteen -day competition of directors, generally a platform for author directors and not high -octane stories about martial arts police officers traveling over time, Vikings warriors carriers of machine guns that mount dinosaurs (and much, much more). Understandably, Sandberg was a bit insecure of how it would decrease.

«I was so fucking nervous, but when he started playing, people laughed so strong that he couldn’t hear what was happening,» he says. «So that was really reassuring.»

The following months and years as the monitoring feature, eventually titled «Kung Fury 2», they joined, they were «totally crazy», admits Sandberg.

In two of the wildest casting pieces, both Schwarzenegger and Fassbender joined the project in 2018, with Fassbender even climbing as a producer. At the Berlin Film Festival that year, special «Kung Fury» bomber jackets were delivered to the distributors who bought the film.

«Kung Fury 2» began the main photoraphy in mid -2019, firing predominantly in Nu Boyana Studios in Bulgaria and then in Germany. Then it entered postproduction that, given the amount of VFX and the green screen technology involved, would occupy a most of the time and the budget. But then, calm.

Unfortunately, it was not due to the pandemic, but to problems with one of the main investors of the film.

In early 2019, Creatun Entertainment USA, the financing and production arm of the Chinese company VFX Creatun Media founded by Minglu Ma, took a majority participation in «Kung Fury 2» and rose on board as producers. As part of the agreement, the company agreed to finance two thirds of the general budget, of which $ 10 million had to pay the double negative of VFX Powerhouse. But Sandberg says that VFX crucial money never arrived.

«Once we began to get to VFX, things really began to decrease, and things became a bit strange,» he says. «And then it turned out that our Chinese financial had basically stopped all payments.»

In September 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Creashun. After what Sandberg says that it was a «year and half of the legal battles», there was finally an agreement in which he thought he agreed to comply with financial obligations. But Sandberg states that they still didn’t pay the money. Then the production sued them again and the demand rumbles. Along the way, Creashun defended himself with the councilors’ claims that the producers had stolen money from production, but repeated auditor’s checks could not find anything in the figures that suggested that it was true.

Sandberg says that, even before the first demand, efforts would have been made to prevent it from reaching that stage. Variety Understand that producers even offered to buy Creasun, offers that were rejected.

«They simply paralyzed every attempt to solve the problem,» he says. «And it was really heartbreaking for me as an artist who has worked on this for years. And there are many people who have poured their hearts into this, and I feel very terrible for them.»

Outside the legal obstacles, Sandberg says that all photography in «Kung Fury 2» is complete, just like an edition of the film. All that remains is post and VFX, which estimates that it would cost in the region of $ 5- $ 10 million.

In the years that passed after his passion project, Sandberg says that «he fell into a deep depression … I simply gave up.» But soon he realized that «as a creative person, what makes me happy is to create.»

So he did it again and began working on a new new secret feature with similar tones such as «Kung Fury», but none of the legal drama. He maintains a lid in the movie for now, but says he is working with Finnish businessman Mikko Kodisoja, Cofundó Supercell, the game company behind the mobile successes «Class shock» and «Brawl stars». Kodisoja is completely financing the project. No other investors are needed.

But Sandberg is also determined that his film about his famous Cop Kung Fu, along with Fassbender and Schwarzenegger, will finally see the light. The response to filtered sizzling, which declared that it was an «internal promotional video that was never supposed to be seen by the public» and contained «early vfx», shows that there is still a desperate audience to see it.

«It’s a fantastic movie and I’m so discouraged that I can’t show it,» he says. «But I have not resigned from it. One day, surely, it will launch. But we only have to drive it. But it is incredible. Fassbender is incredible. Arnold is incredible. We had such a wonderful experience in the set and they all felt the love behind him. Therefore, it is a pity that ends in this way. But it does not end.