After years of delay, the sequel to Ben Affleck’s 2016 action thriller The Accountant is finally back on track, moving to a new studio and confirming its cast.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the second installment is already deep into the casting process and has multiple stars from the first movie back on board including Spider-Man’s J.K. Simmons, The Punisher’s Jon Bernthal, and Shooter’s Cynthia Addai-Robinson, alongside lead Affleck.
The first movie follows corrupt accountant Christian Wolff (Affleck) who works for various illegal companies and manipulates their financial records. One day he attracts the attention of the FBI, so to cover his tracks he takes up a legitimate client to throw off officers, but in doing so he digs himself deeper into a criminal organization out of his control.
Other than the confirmed cast, the project has also moved over Amazon MGM Studios after it was previously in development at Warner Bros like the first film. There is no explanation for the move, but since the sequel was first announced way back in 2017, we can only hope that the jump to Amazon will speed up the process.
However, it will be interesting to see if the sequel causes just as much of a rift between audiences and critics as the first film did. From its time of release up until now, The Accountant has attracted very divisive reviews, and currently sits at a 56% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to a much more impressive audience score of 76%.
Many critics complained of the film's messy storyline and "structural zig-zagging" as Brian Eggert from Deep Focus Review puts it. But fans disagree, as one writes "It's an action film that delivers on its promise…there's definitely room for improvement but there's fighting and guns and cool scenes that are just enough for me to turn my brain off and enjoy."
Not much is known about the plot for number 2, and the movie does not yet have a release date, but with the original cast returning, we can expect The Accounatnt 2 to pick up where the original left off.
