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Preview:
- The first trailer for ‘The Accountant 2’ has arrived.
- Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal and Cynthia Addai-Robinson are among the stars.
- Gavin O’Connor directs again.
(L to R) Jon Bernthal and Ben Affleck in ‘The Accountant 2’. Photo: Amazon MGM Studios.
It has been nine years since Ben Affleck played Christian Wolff in ‘The Accountant‘, a high-functioning neurodivergent accountant who, under cover of a small-town bean-counting firm, launders and hides money for some very dangerous crooks. Oh, and he also happens to be a badass when it comes to weapons and hand-to-hand combat.
But when the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King (J.K. Simmons), starts to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk (Anna Kendrick) has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise…
Directed by Gavin O’Connor from a script by Bill Dubuque, it earned more than $155 million from a $44 million budget at the box office.
At last, a sequel, ‘The Accountant 2‘, is in the can and headed our way in a couple of months, with a premiere at SXSW lined up and the first trailer now online.
Related Article: Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal Return in First Pictures from ‘The Accountant 2’
Why did ‘The Accountant 2’ take so long to hit screens?
(L to R) Brax (Jon Bernthal) and Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) in ‘The Accountant 2’. Photo Credit: Warrick Page/Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.
According to O’Connor, it was a combination of misfortune and bad timing.
Here’s what the director had to say to Vanity Fair about his eight years trying to get the sequel made:
“It was brutal. It just felt like this flower that was ready to bloom, and then it would stop again and start again. It was so frustrating. It was very important to me to make an exuberant, entertaining movie. I wanted to make an emotional film and also not just an action movie, which I would find wildly boring and uninteresting. An action movie that dealt with human connection and love was something that I really wanted to explore.”
Partly, it was because O’Connor, who also made sports drama ‘The Way Back’ with Affleck starring, experienced the impact of the pandemic on movie theaters as the film arrived in 2020:
“The movie came out on a Friday, and the theaters closed on a Monday. It was heartbreaking. I took a break from filmmaking, left Los Angeles, and spent some time with his family. ‘The Accountant 2’ got me back in the game. It was really invigorating. And so, I do feel like I’ve hit another level as a storyteller.”
What’s the story of ‘The Accountant 2’?
(L to R) Anais (Daniella Pineda) and Ray King (J.K. Simmons) in ‘The Accountant 2’. Photo Credit: Warrick Page/Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.
When an old acquaintance is murdered, leaving behind a cryptic message to “find the accountant,” Wolff is compelled to solve the case.
Realizing more extreme measures are necessary, Wolff recruits his estranged and highly lethal brother, Brax (Jon Bernthal), to help. In partnership with U.S. Treasury Deputy Director Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), they uncover a deadly conspiracy, becoming targets of a ruthless network of killers who will stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried…
Who else is in ‘The Accountant 2’?
Brax (Jon Bernthal) in ‘The Accountant 2’. Photo Credit: Warrick Page/Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.
The cast for the new movie includes the returning likes of Addai-Robinson, Simmons and Bernthal plus new recruits such as Allison Robertson and ‘Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom’s Daniella Pineda.
‘The Accountant 2’: The Cast Speak
Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) in ‘The Accountant 2’. Photo Credit: Warrick Page/Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.
Affleck, who rarely does sequels, has clearly connected with this character:
“I felt even more prepared and educated, and I had a deeper affinity for the character.”
While O’Connor knows what Affleck brings to it:
“He put the clothes back on and he just started becoming the strange laboratory of Chris’s brain, and he just started expressing Chris again in a very honest, authentic, very real way.”
Affleck also realizes the appeal of the movie as a whole:
“You can do a movie for a big audience. And I think that’s really the same thing as a movie with characters that seem real, and that you connect to and care about.”
And this is what Bernthal thinks of his character, Brax:
“Underneath it all, I think especially with Braxton, is just this unbelievable yearning to have his brother in his life and this unbelievable loneliness that he’s been trying to fill with all these very empty ways.”
Finally, here’s Addai-Robinson on her return as Marybeth:
“I was always hopeful that I would get to revisit this story and see how Marybeth was doing these days. I was very excited to finally get the call that we were getting the band back together.”
Could there be a third movie?
(L to R) Ben Affleck (Christian Wolff), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Marybeth Medina), Director Gavin O’Connor, and Jon Bernthal (Brax) in ‘The Accountant 2’. Photo Credit: Warrick Page/Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC.
While all involved certainly want to reunite, we’ll likely have to wait and see how this one performs first.
Here’s O’Connor:
“I have a lot of thoughts about what to do with the third. I’ve been thinking about it for a lot of years.”
While Affleck strikes a more cautionary note:
“I’m keenly aware of the fact that you kind of have to earn another movie. The worst pitfall is to store a bunch of your good ideas for the next installment. If you don’t create an interest demand the first time out there, you’re just going to be playing that to an empty house.”
When will ‘The Accountant 2’ be in theaters?
The ‘Accountant’ sequel is currently targeting an April 25th release in cinemas, something of a rarity for Amazon MGM studios projects.
Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) in ‘The Accountant 2’. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video © Amazon Content Services LLC.
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