Henry Cavill's Underrated Spy Comedy Gets Second Life On Netflix's US Top 10 Chart 9 Years Later

Summary The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) has become a hit on Netflix in the United States,

It landed at No. 8 on the Netflix U.S. chart in the first week of August 2024.

This still doesn't mean a sequel is any closer to being made.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has become a hit on Netflix in the United States. The 2015 Guy Ritchie movie is an adaptation of the 1960s TV show of the same name and follows a CIA agent and a KGB agent who work together on an important mission during the Cold War. The star-studded Man from U.N.C.L.E. cast featured Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, and Hugh Grant. The movie had a lukewarm critical reception and flopped at the box office, earning $110 million against a $75 million budget.

Netflix has now calculated their Top 10 most-watched movies in the United States for the week of July 29 through August 4. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has landed on the chart at No. 8, marking its debut week in the Top 10. It is the second-oldest movie on the chart, behind only Minions, which premiered one month before it in 2015 and is trending on the platform because the new installment in the franchise, Despicable Me 4, is currently a hit in theaters.

Could Netflix Success Help The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 2 Happen?

The Sequel Has Been Rumored Since 2017

If the movie continues to climb the U.S. chart and its popularity grows, this could reignite conversations about a possible Man from U.N.C.L.E. 2. Initially, there was talk about a sequel potentially getting off the ground in 2017 when it was revealed that Ritchie's co-writer Lionel Wigram was working on a draft and that Cavill had expressed interest in returning for the project. However, no further concrete announcements were made following that point, which is likely a result of the movie's commercial failure.

However, the movie performing well on Netflix could be a good sign for a continuation. Another benefit is the fact that Guy Ritchie already has a good relationship with the streaming platform, having created their popular crime drama The Gentlemen, a spinoff from his 2019 movie of the same name. If the streaming numbers can make up for some amount of the movie's theatrical deficit, a sequel with a tighter budget could be considered a less risky prospect.

The Gentlemen is the first spinoff or sequel that has been made to a Guy Ritchie movie since Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in 2011, though others have been planned or announced.

However, a sequel movie following up on the The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ending still seems somewhat unlikely. Although Cavill has returned to the spy genre in Argylle and reunited with Ritchie in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, his co-star has become a controversial figure in Hollywood. In recent years, Hammer has been accused of emotional and physical abuse, among other allegations, which led to him being dropped from various projects and choosing to leave others, so reuniting the core cast seems like an unlikely prospect for the sequel.

Source: Netflix