10 gloriously dumb minutes of "held hostage" Kung Fury 2 leak online

Although full of spoilers for the unreleased 2019 film, the leaked sizzle reel brims over with silly gags, crazy visuals, and Michael Fassbender hamming it up.

By William Hughes | May 10, 2025 | 1:14pm

Michael Fassbender in Kung Fury: The Movie, Screenshot: YouTube

Film News Kung Fury

More than five years ago, writer, director, and star David Sandberg assembled a crew to film a full-length sequel to 2015’s Kung Fury, his deliriously fun crowdfunded action-comedy short. The film would be bigger than the original half-hour version in every way, expanding out Sandberg’s vision of a slapstick 1980s Miami where superhero-esque “Thunder Cops” battled “Kung Führer” Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army for control of all of time and space. Among other things, Kung Fury: The Movie employed some actual name Hollywood actors (including Michael Fassbender and Arnold Schwarzenegger), and wasn’t shot entirely in Sandberg’s office—although it did still make pretty liberal use of Sandberg’s beloved green-screen. Filming on the movie wrapped in 2019, and the movie entered extensive post-production. But then, in September of 2020, reports broke that a lawsuit had been filed by the movie’s producers against some of its financiers, alleging failure to pony up, and that all work on the movie was being suspended. Five years later, Kung Fury 2 has never seen the light of day in any form.

Until this weekend, when a leaked 10-minute sizzle reel of the movie began circulating online. (We’re not going to bother posting a link, because takedown notices are moving fast this morning, but dedicated Google work will likely unearth it.) We’ll caution that the leaked reel—confirmed as being legitimate by Sandberg, who told Variety it was an internal promo video never intended to be seen by the public—spoils a lot of the story of the movie, and, more importantly, a huge number of its extremely silly, extremely funny gags, so if you’re holding out hope for a full release, you might want to hold off watching to preserve some of the surprise.

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That being said, it’s hard to imagine a better advertisement for that full release, because the sizzle reel is one of the most euphorically fun and goofy things we’ve seen in a minute. Fassbender, especially, is an absolute delight, having clearly understood the assignment of playing “no-bullshit renegade FBI agent” Colt Magnum, fitting in perfectly with Sandberg’s deadpan action hero tone. And while Sandberg cautioned that the reel contains “temp VFX,” it nevertheless also looks sick as hell, full of sight gags and insane imagery. In his statement, Sandberg didn’t sound entirely happy about the leak—timed, coincidentally or not, to be just two weeks off from the 10-year anniversary of the original film’s debut at Cannes—but did say “I hope at least people can see the passion that we poured into the movie, the world deserves to see it as it was meant to be seen. This movie has been held hostage for the past 5 years but I promise to keep fighting for it and make sure this film gets the chance it truly deserves.”