It's been a long wait for traction on the sequel to the 2016 surprise-hit action drama, The Accountant, which stars Ben Affleck. With a modest production budget of $44M, the film went on to gross $155.2M at the global box office. The film also went on to become the most rented motion picture of 2017.
While the film was profitable and certainly resonated with critics and the general audience, the pic's profit margins were somewhat slim, making Warner Bros. reluctant to pull the trigger on a sequel.
However, Affleck and his best buddy Matt Damon opted to purchase the film rights for The Accountant (via their production banner Artists Equity) from WB and then move the production for the sequel to Amazon MGM.
The sequel from Amazon was officially announced a couple of weeks ago and it seems things are moving fast as J.K. Simmons revealed that he's set to begin filming next week.
Speaking to Collider, Simmons stated, "Yeah, I head to LA in a little over a week to do some rehearsals and pre-production and start shooting my chunk of it. I’m not even sure, I think they start early next week, because then I'm in the week after and doing my supporting thing."
Affleck is naturally returning, along with Jon Bernthal, Simmons, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson. Gavin O’Connor is also returning to direct, with Bill Dubuque handling script duties once again.
Not too long ago, O'Connor disclosed that he's always envisioned making three films to complete The Accountant trilogy. Said O'Connor, "I've always wanted to do three...So there'll be more screen time for Bernthal in the second one. The third movie is going to be the two brothers, this odd couple. The third one is going be a buddy picture."
With the film moving from WB to Amazon MGM, there's the possibility that the sequel could skip theaters and head straight to Prime Video, however, nothing has been confirmed just yet.
The Accountant Official Synopsis: Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world’s most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King (J.K. Simmons), starting 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.