Stardust director had big plans for fantasy sequel set in 1960s London

Matthew Vaughn had big plans for a 'Stardust' sequel.

The 52-year-old director was at the helm of the beloved 2007 fantasy adventure - which was based on Neil Gaiman's 1999 novel of the same name and starred the likes of Claire Danes, Charlie Cox and Ricky Gervais - and despite Paramount Pictures being put off by the box office performance, the filmmaker was keen to explore other ideas with those characters.

He told Collider: "It was such a, you know this concept I’d done.

"The bottom line of it, you said you’re a big fan, it’s the death of Tristan and Yvaine, and he throws the necklace off, the necklace lands in 1960s London.

"So you have these crazy characters running around 1960s London but fitting in because it was a crazy time."

He and the studio disagreed over how the original movie should be marketed, with Paramount apparently wanting to present the film as something akin to 'Lord of the Rings'.

He said: "Listen, 'Stardust', again was a bittersweet time for me, because when Paramount were releasing it they kept trying to make it look like 'Lord of the Rings' and I’d say, 'This ain’t Lord of the Rings' and they went, 'What is it?' and I went 'Princess Bride' and they’re like 'Princess Bride tanked.'

"And I was like, 'Yes, it tanked because it was marketed badly and then it became one of the biggest DVDs of all time, so lets just make it lets embrace it.' "

The movie went onto earn $137 million at the worldwide box office, making it his highest grossing film up to that point, although it wasn't considered as much of a success for the studio.

Vaughn added: "And they would not listen to me. So then in England, they went do what you want, and we called it the fairytale that won’t behave.

"And it was my biggest grossing movie at that time. So the economics I have to figure out, there’s now new people at Paramount, but the story was fun."