Melissa McCarthy says Spy should have become a nine-film franchise.

The 56-year-old actress, who starred alongside Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, Jude Law and more in Paul Feig's 2015 action comedy, has admitted "everyone" was on board for a sequel and she wishes the film had spawned several spinoffs with their own separate villain.

She told Variety: "We should be on the ninth Spy! Everyone on Spy was ready to re-rack immediately. There should be a new villain, new location."

McCarthy admitted being a woman "probably doesn't help" with getting the idea off the ground, but she is baffled as to why there was never a follow-up.

She added: "No -- well, Jesus, that probably doesn't help, but I don't know. It did so well. People can say that doesn't matter. I think it does.

"For Thunder Force, we were going to roll right into another one. We were like, "It's so fun. It did incredibly well for Netflix. We already have the idea for it."

McCarthy noted that she's willing to "take the fall" if she writes a project that "tanks", but she insisted that's not been the case.

She explained: "We don't make $8 billion. We don't make those kind of movies, but, I mean, $120 million, I'm not mad at that.

"The studio's not mad at that. We want to make a reasonably priced thing that makes you a good profit. For some reason, that model is no longer desirable. I can't figure out the math of it."

Meanwhile, she called out studio executives who try to be too scientific about the art of comedy, particularly when it comes to unexpectedly brilliant moves like Statham's comedic turn in Spy.

She recalled: "Paul and I went out to dinner with Statham, and we were just goofing around the table, and I was like, 'Stop talking about it! Just do what you're doing -- it's so funny.' But Paul had the idea to be like, 'What about Statham?'

"But when you take all of the artists out of it -- they start to do the math of it, and that's not comedy. They want a big premise.

"But most really great comedies, it's about the people and the characters and the story, and it's not like, 'And they were both aliens at the end!'"

While some bosses still insist on finding "that hook", McCarthy doesn't think such a thing exists, and chasing it can be detrimental to the genre.

She said: "Then they say comedies don't work, and I'm like, 'No, bad comedies don't work.' And I won't take the fall for that."