Director Gavin O’Connor has been attempting to make a sequel to The Accountant, the motion thriller movie starring Ben Affleck as a gifted autistic accountant who cooks the books for legal organizations, because the first movie hit theaters in 2016. “It was brutal,” he tells Vainness Honest. “It simply felt like this flower that was able to bloom, after which it will cease once more and begin once more. It was so irritating.”
The sequel was caught in growth for eight years as studios modified their methods and management, and the business turned away from making entertaining however sensible mid-budget films. Lastly, The Accountant 2, which stars Affleck as Christian Wolff and Jon Bernthal as his extremely deadly brother, Brax, will see the sunshine of day when it has its world premiere on the South by Southwest Movie and TV Competition of March 8, adopted by a theatrical run on April 25 through Amazon MGM.
The sequel has lots of the elements that made the primary movie memorable, together with stunning twists and robust motion sequences. But it surely additionally delves deeper into the primary characters’ emotional wants and wishes by showcasing the brothers’ relationship in a manner the primary movie couldn’t. “I’m a believer in that a number of issues can exist,” Affleck says. “You are able to do a film for an enormous viewers. And I believe that’s actually the identical factor as a film with characters that appear actual, and that you just connect with and care about.”
In The Accountant 2, Wolff is recruited to assist Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson, additionally reprising her position from the unique movie) remedy a case after somebody near them is murdered. To take action, he and Brax should work collectively regardless of their divergent personalities and years of estrangement. The brothers haven’t seen one another because the occasions that unfolded within the authentic movie eight years earlier. “It was essential to me to make an exuberant, entertaining film,” O’Connor says of the sequel, which was written by Invoice Dubuque. “I wished to make an emotional movie and likewise not simply an motion film, which I might discover wildly boring and uninteresting. An motion film that handled human connection and love was one thing that I actually wished to discover.”
Bernthal appears again fondly on his expertise on The Accountant, which filmed in 2015 in Atlanta. On the time, he hadn’t but starred within the Marvel sequence The Punisher or critically acclaimed movies like Wind River and Child Driver, or gained an Emmy for showing on The Bear. He remembers a day on The Accountant the place he was sporting a slick swimsuit and carrying Brax’s gun and caught a glimpse of his reflection in a window. “I keep in mind simply being, like, ‘Holy shit, man, you’re actually doing this,” he says.
Affleck was additionally on a speedy ascent round that point, along with his directing profession taking off after 2012’s Oscar-winning Argo and a sequence of canny appearing decisions that included status fare like 2014’s Gone Woman and caped crusading in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Daybreak of Justice. When it was launched, The Accountant was a modest hit (the $44 million movie earned $155 million worldwide), however Affleck says it has turn out to be an viewers favourite. “It was a film that I discovered that I might hear about from folks,” he says. “It was a film that caught round, that folks would speak about and say, ‘Oh, hey, I like The Accountant.’ And there gave the impression to be plenty of goodwill in the direction of it.”
So each actors had been very recreation to come back again for a sequel and had been incentivized by the chance to work nearer collectively this time . Within the first movie, the brothers’ traumatic upbringing is revealed in flashbacks—however the grownup Christian and Brax don’t cross paths till the tip of the movie, when the viewers discovers their familial relationship. In The Accountant 2, although, it’s on the core of the movie. “I really like Jon a lot as an actor and as a man,” Affleck says. “I’ve an actual fondness that I believed would translate simply into this form of brother relationship.”
The centrality of Brax and Christian’s relationship allowed Bernthal to peel again layers of his character past his flashy garments and flashier character. In any case, there’s nobody who understands you extra—and is faster to name you out—than your personal household. “It was actually enjoyable to form of take a deeper dive on this one,” he says, “But additionally as a result of we get to spend a lot extra time with them, particularly collectively, we see the issues which are form of a façade and a canopy and get to the reality of who they really are.”
Primarily, each males are on the lookout for connection. There’s a theme of loneliness that runs via the story, from Christian’s usually fumbled efforts to satisfy girls to Brax’s wounded questioning why his brother hasn’t wished to be in contact. “This can be a man who desires to have a relationship. He desires to have associates,” Affleck says of Christian. “He’s good at some issues and good at others. And I believed that the form of vulnerability and honesty of that was form of an fascinating threat to take.”
