10 Films That Risk Being 2015's Biggest Box Office Failures

4. The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

2015 looks to be a mini-revival for the spy genre, combining original efforts like Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Secret Service, Paul Feig's Spy and Sacha Baron Cohen's Grimbsy with established franchises releases Spectre and Mission: Impossible 5. Not all of these espionage-related movies are going to be box office hits, and at this moment in time it seems that Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is in the greatest danger of turning out to be a commercial disappointment. Based on the 1960's television series of the same name, the movie adaptation went through a fairly difficult production that originally had Steven Soderbergh lined up to direct and seemingly every big-name male star in Hollywood attached to one of the two lead roles before Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer were cast. The project started shooting way back in September 2013 and was originally set to be released this month before it was pushed back to August 13 to allow for some fine-tuning in post-production. Although director Ritchie's two Sherlock Holmes movies earned over $500m each at the box office, they had the benefit of being based on one of popular culture's most iconic characters, not to mention having one of the world's biggest movie stars in the title role. To casual audiences The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an unknown quantity with little star power; Henry Cavill is still best known as Superman while Armie Hammer is associated with notorious box office flop The Lone Ranger. The release date could turn out to be a problem; outside of franchise releases and comedies most late-August releases fail to earn more than $100m at the domestic box office, and at $75m The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also happens to be the most expensive of the year's original spy properties.