Ben Affleck has starred in a number of high-profile titles over the years, many of which have earned follow-up installments in a variety of forms. Hitting theaters later this month is The Accountant 2, which comes nearly a decade after the original The Accountant landed in theaters. While some fans were disappointed by the lengthy wait for a sequel, the time between entries confirms, in a sense, just how passionate both Affleck and director Gavin O’Connor are about the narrative, as they weren’t willing to let the series vanish from their storytelling priorities, regardless of how much time had passed. The Accountant 2 lands in theaters on April 25th.
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Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) has a talent for solving complex problems. 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.
Despite the many challenges Affleck faced in bringing the project to life, while speaking with ComicBook, the actor joked that one of the biggest hurdles he had to overcome was a sequence in which his character participates in line dancing.
When asked about the biggest challenges of the sequel, Affleck teased, “Definitely the line dancing was the most challenging. I think I’m a little embarrassed to say that I required weeks of rehearsal for me … I had some really great, patient people who helped me out and were like, ‘Nope, that’s not how it goes, but keep working.’ And it was really fun. The other performers in the scene were really supportive and didn’t make me feel stupid when I went out there.”
He continued, “The action stuff is always its own challenge. You want to be in the hands of somebody like Gavin where there’s an answer to every question. It’s not just like, ‘Point the gun in this direction, that looks cool,’ because that’s a hard thing to understand as an actor. ‘Well, I’m not doing it because it looks cool, right? I want to have a reason why I’m doing it.’ That’s what Gavin really understands. He makes it about the intention of the character, why they’re doing it, and then it also can make it look cool, too. The character was something that I felt more and more comfortable and familiar with, [which] was a real gift this time.”
Despite this sequel returning to a successful world, O’Connor didn’t want to play it safe by replicating the debut entry, and instead wanted to push the experience into new territory.
“I wanted to change everything. There were very few setups in the first movie. The DNA of that, I integrated into the second one — him eating, getting some of the behavioral things there, and his Airstream, making sure we got all that right,” the filmmaker expressed. “But it was really about making left turns entirely in the script and then in the shooting of it.”
[RELATED – The Accountant 2 First Reactions: Ben Affleck + Jon Bernthal Equals a Strong Sequel]
Following this reunion between Affleck and O’Connor, ideas understandably started to gestate about a third entry in the series, which fans might not have to wait another decade for.
“Well, the puzzle part is the big issue with doing the third one, in regards to doing another puzzle plot, which is not easy to construct,” O’Connor pointed out. “We want to do a third one. Ben and I, we’re having those conversations, so we want to do one, we want to do one with Amazon.”
Affleck added, “That’s the thing that’s hard about this one … You have to make it complicated enough, and you did a great job, that you need somebody who’s great at this to do it, but not so complicated that the audience is [lost] and those guys, [writer] Bill [Dubuque] and Gavin really built something for this. I could see how much time they spent and worked it over and over and over until it got to that place where, to me, it just clicked.”
As far as whether returning to play his character in The Accountant inspired Affleck to want to return to any other characters from his filmography, the actor admitted, “There are a lot of movies that just don’t ever feel like, ‘What would the sequel be?’ But this is the kind of movie where you know you like the characters, the plot is such that they could continue to engage in life, and you can imagine how it continues to be an interesting story, so it makes a lot of sense to me. There are plenty of characters that I’ve really liked playing, I don’t know what the sequel to Shakespeare in Love is, you know what I mean? I like that guy a lot, Ned Allen, but this is definitely — I will say, the one I’ve always thought it would be great to keep doing this because personally, as an actor, it’s just really fun.”
While Marvel fans were excited to see some superheroes from previous 20th Century Fox adaptations appear in Deadpool & Wolverine, Affleck’s Daredevil was absent, to which the actor pointed out, “I think it seems like there’s another Matt Murdock right now. Is it airing yet? Charlie Cox and Jon [Bernthal]’s, obviously, Punisher. So the world has got no shortage of people jumping into those parts, and that’s great. But I’m really into this right now.”
The Accountant 2 lands in theaters on April 25th.
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Image courtesy of Peacock
