Ben Affleck has officially signed on to reprise his role in a sequel to the 2016 action thriller The Accountant, and that’s straight from the director’s mouth.
“There will not be a Way Back sequel, but we are doing an Accountant sequel. We literally just closed that deal. We’re doing The Accountant again,” director Gavin O’Connor dished during an appearance on Cinema Blend’s ReelBlend podcast.
In the original film, the superstar portrayed Chris Wolff, a forensic accountant with autism trained in martial arts and tasked with revealing internal financial discrepancies for criminal and terrorist organizations across the globe. In addition to Affleck, Jon Bernthal will reportedly return as Braxton, the younger brother of Affleck’s character.
O’Connor also revealed on the podcast that he’s always envisioned the story he wanted to tell in The Accountant as a trilogy of films. “I’ve always wanted to do three because the second one’s going to be more with – we’re going to integrate his brother into the story,” he said. “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.”
While best known for directing 2004’s Miracle and 2011’s Warrior in addition to the aforementioned films, O’Connor most recently served as an executive producer on the hit HBO Max series Mare of Eastown. The Kate Winslet crime drama is currently up for six Emmy Awards and another eight at the Creative Emmys. Meanwhile, Affleck will next reunite with best buddy Matt Damon in the upcoming historical drama The Last Duel. Directed by Ridley Scott, the movie is slated to hit theaters October 15th.
