Henry Cavill is a very famous face, but he’s not quite what you would call a major movie star by the standard definition of the term. He’s played Superman and Sherlock Holmes, all while James Bond rumors continue to percolate, but with the exception of taking second billing behind Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the majority of his other big screen roles haven’t really broken through.
Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. certainly deserved to find a much bigger audience than it did when the 1960s-set spy caper hit theaters in the summer of 2015, though. It was a fast-paced and frantic buddy movie laced with period trappings and anachronistic gadgets, led by the crackling double act between Cavill’s suave American agent Napoleon Solo and Armie Hammer’s gruff Russian operative Illya Kuryakin.
Reviews were largely positive across the board, but The Man from U.N.C.L.E. bombed at the box office after earning less than $110 million globally on a budget reported to be hovering around the $85 million mark. There was talk of sequel back in early 2017 after Hammer revealed he’d essentially pressured producer, co-writer and regular Ritchie collaborator Lionel Wigram into taking a crack at a second adventure, but there’s been virtually nothing heard from the project since.
However, insider Daniel Richtman claims that The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 2 is back in early development with Cavill returning, although Hammer is reportedly and very unsurprisingly said to be out. Admittedly, this is just the latest in a long line of titles that the tipster has linked The Witcher star to since the news first broke of J.J. Abrams’ Superman reboot that spans everything from video game adaptations, Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbusters and Disney roles, so don’t take it as gospel quite yet that Warner Bros. would plow forward with a sequel to a movie that flopped the first time around. Not to mention a brand that’s now been tainted by its prior association to the blackballed Armie Hammer.
