Many people assumed 2015's "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." was the start of a franchise. Until the box-office receipts started being counted.

The movie seemed to have it all. Director Guy Ritchie was huge at the time, fresh off the blockbuster success of his Sherlock Holmes updates in 2009 and 2011, and still dining out on the success of his genre-defining crime films "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" (1998) and "Snatch" (2000).

And "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." came with name recognition and a built-in fanbase from the original '60s TV series on which it was based. And it featured two rising young stars -- Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, both of whom had blockbuster films in their recent past (2013's "Man of Steel" for Cavill and 2010's "The Social Network" for Hammer).

Yet all that didn't translate into ticket sales. It only made $13.5 million on its opening weekend, which sounds like a lot until you realize it cost $75 million to make. Studios generally require the first weekend to cover a bigger piece of the budget before they call something a hit.

However, the movie eventually did break even, and two years later, Hammer, at least, was still hopeful that a sequel would happen.

He told SlashFilm.com that he asked the film's co-producer and co-writer Lionel Wigram point-blank about a second film. "I was like, 'Dude, what's the deal? I get asked about this all the time. Can you just write a sequel?' He was like, 'You know what? Yeah, I'll do it. Sure, I'll write a sequel.'" Hammer concluded in the interview that, "Apparently the sequel is being written right now."

Two years have passed, and that's come to nothing. It's possible he's still working on it, but it seems more likely at this point that he was just trying to get Hammer off the phone.

Wigram's a busy guy, after all. He has seven other films currently in production, including a third Sherlock Holmes film with Ritchie that's currently in pre-production.

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