Ben Affleck’s recent career reinvention was steering him away from movies like Armageddon, but this virtue doesn’t apply to all genre films, evidentially. After all, he’s soon to arrive on set of The Flash to play Batman for the fourth time, while director Gavin O’Connor has plans for two sequels to 2016’s thriller The Accountant.
The sleeper hit starred the two-time Academy Award winner as Christian Wolff, a mathematics genius who lives a dangerous double life, running books for various criminal organizations; simultaneously an expert in combat. When he takes on a legitimate client to keep the feds off his back, Wolff finds himself in a conspiracy with personal and professional implications.
The Accountant opened at the top of the box office. Ultimately, the film earned $155 million on a $44 million budget, although reviews were generally mixed. However, O’Connor just confirmed that he closed a deal for a sequel. He intends to end the trilogy with a buddy adventure with Affleck and Jon Bernthal as Christian’s estranged brother, Braxton.
“We literally just closed that deal. We’re doing The Accountant again. I’ve always wanted to do three because what, the second one’s going to be more with, we’re going to integrate his brother into the story. So there’ll be more screen time for Bernthal in the second one. And then the third movie’s going to be, I call it, ‘Rain Man on steroids’. The third movie is going to be the two brothers, this odd couple. The third one is going be a buddy picture.”
A sequel to The Accountant was announced summer 2017; Affleck said last year he was determined to make it happen. Indeed, all systems seem to be a go if O’Connor is talking about it so publicly.
