Matt Damon says that, more than a decade after the idea first surfaced, he is still hoping to make a sequel to Rounders, his poker-themed thriller that came to theaters in 1998. The movie was a financial disappointment, earning just $22.9 million against its $12 million budget, but it has grown a cult following over the years, particularly among poker players. It centered on two friends (Damon and Edward Norton), who need to quickly pay off a large debt, and set their sights on an underground poker tournament.
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According to Damon, he spoke with Ed Norton about it recently, and they both want to get a new movie going. Unfortunately, there may be some rights issues that are slowing the process down.
“The one that we’ve been talking about for years — and I just saw Edward Norton a few weeks ago, [and] all of us want to do it — is a second Rounders movie,” Damon told The Hollywood Reporter. “Because so much has happened in that poker world in the last 25 years, it would be fun to catch up with those guys.”
There are some questions regarding the rights to the film, which was part of the Miramax library. In most cases, ownership of Miramax films is fairly easy to figure out, but sometimes when former executives Bob and Harvey Weinstein have a full or partial ownership stake in a film, things are complicated. Both Weinsteins were accused of sexual abuse, with Harvey being convicted. In a small number of cases, the Weinsteins invested their own money in Miramax films, or bought the rights from Miramax outright, due to budgetary and distribution disagreements with parent company Disney. Famous examples are Kevin Smith’s Dogma and Michael Mooer’s Fahrenheit 9/11.
“You’ve got to figure out the chain of title and who owns it, and everybody’s got their hand in the pot,” Damon told THR. “So we’ve got to figure out a way to make a deal that makes sense for everybody, particularly the people who are going to make the movie because at Artists Equity, that’s who we care about — the cast and crew. We’re trying to figure that out because I think we’d all like to do that.”
The Weinsteins originally quit Disney-owned Miramax to found The Weinstein Company in 2005. In 2013, TWC and Miramax entered a 20-year development deal, which the Weinsteins said would result in a number of sequels to movies they made while at Disney.
“I’ve discussed making Rounders 2 with Matt Damon and I would say that’s going to be instantaneous,” Harvey Weinstein said back in 2013. “The [writers David Levien and Brian Koppelman] have a great idea, a way to make it more international where you start the card game in Paris, that’s all I want to say. There might be a certain beautiful Parisian actress involved in it, and then we’re off to the racetrack and Vegas with Matty and Edward Norton, and a new supervillain to replace John Malkovich.”
Obviously, that never happened. In 2017, The Weinstein Company fired Harvey Weinstein, and the next year, the studio declared bankruptcy. The rights to most Miramax movies are with an investment firm who have since partnered with Paramount.
“That’s one of those movies that, it came out and didn’t do well,” Damon told THR. “When it came out, it kind of bombed, and then it got discovered by people later. When that happens, people feel a sense of ownership, like, ‘Hey, that’s my movie. I was a champion of that movie even when no one else was.’ So it feels like there’s a lot of goodwill behind it. But we gotta figure out if we can make it happen.”
