A star-powered smash hit remake that still saw a sequel go up in smoke keeps its cover intact on streaming

The fad for transforming popular TV shows from decades past into prospective blockbuster franchises has died off a little – if we ignore the Mission: Impossible-shaped elephant in the room – but Get Smart performed more than well enough to justify a second installment, and yet it failed to come together.

Reinventing the 1960s spy series as an $80 million action comedy that partnered Steve Carrel with Anne Hathaway, the esteemed supporting cast also featured Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Terry Crews, James Caan, Bill Murray, and even more beyond, so star power was never going to be an issue.

Mildly received by critics without coming close to drowning in praise, Get Smart nonetheless conspired to earn upwards of $200 million at the box office, with Warner Bros. announcing shortly afterwards that a sequel was in active development… and that was pretty much about as far as it got.

Carrel admitted he’d tried and failed to crack the screenplay, so fair play to the actor for not making another one for the sake of what would have been a substantial paycheck. Rumors bubbled away just beneath the surface for another five years, though, before Get Smart 2 was officially declared dead in the water by its key creatives.

It may have been a decade and a half since the agents of Control battled against the forces of KAOS, but FlixPatrol naming Get Smart as a Top 10 hit on Max in no less than 20 countries around the world paints the picture of the studio potentially missing a trick by not squeezing at least one follow-up out of the property.