We’re sorry to tell you this, but Argylle is very much not becoming the next James Bond franchise, it seems… So much for having an MCU-level production budget.

Here’s the deal. Countless fans wanted Henry Cavill to play James Bond in the new series, but it didn’t happen. Then, Cavill signed a brand-new superspy contract, and countless fans wanted it to signify the beginning of a new Bond-ish franchise. Now, it seems like it was more of a super-waste of money, judging by its box office haul.

Henry Cavill’s Argylle Had a Ludicrous Budget

A tale as old as Hollywood itself just transpired before our very eyes once again. A dark horse movie that aimed for establishing a new massive franchise was given an MCU- level production budget to play with… What could possibly go wrong, huh?

Matthew Vaughn’s latest superspy action Argylle starring Henry Cavill had a ridiculous budget of over $200M, but it didn’t help the movie take over the world. Spending so much money on production alone is rarely a safe bet considering the classic “x2 to break even” box office rule, but this time, even a two times lower budget wouldn’t have saved the unfortunate movie from flopping.

Argylle Loses Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

It’s typically assumed that to break even, a movie has to double its production budget. In the case of Henry Cavill’s latest superspy outing, this means that it needed to collect over $400M at the box office to start making money — but Argylle didn’t have the luck of earning even a quarter of that sum so far.

As of the time of writing, Argylle has only grossed $86.5M worldwide, making it a disastrous bomb. Even if we were to downplay the x2 rule, it’s still losing a few hundred million dollars; doesn’t look like the start of a successful franchise, does it?

The sole hope the movie still has are the few powerful markets where it hasn’t been released just yet, namely, China and Japan. Matthew Vaughn’s tend to perform well in Asia, but let’s be honest: two countries are very unlikely to add the much needed $350M to Argylle’s worldwide haul, and without that money, Cavill’s unfortunate superhero movie will still remain a terrible flop.