With The Accountant 2 hitting cinemas soon, director Gavin O’Connor has confirmed that The Accountant 3 is already being planned.
It’s been nine years since we last saw Ben Affleck’s criminal accountant Christian Wolff in The Accountant. The film was directed by Gavin O’Connor and written by Bill Dubuque, and despite a lukewarm critical response, the film became a hit with audiences. A year after the film was released, a sequel was announced; imaginatively titled The Accountant 2, it’s is in cinemas this April.
The film just had its world premiere at the South By South West festival, where the word of mouth seems largely positive. While there, director Gavin O’Connor confirmed to Collider that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Christian Wolff. The Accountant 2 is only the middle part of a planned trilogy, according to the director.
“There’s always been three. Since post-production, since I started editing the first one,” O’Connor confirmed. The director also praised Dubuque and largely credits him for being able to develop the franchise further.
“Bill was a great partner in allowing me to start taking it in directions. Once we started working together, and we became really good friends—I love Bill. He’s just the greatest,” he said.
The filmmaker added: “We started talking about it, and I said, ‘We should be doing three of these, so what’s the interstitial movie?’ Which is two, which is now, exactly what we talked about. And we have three.”
It seems that The Accountant 3 is still in early stages of development and certainly hasn’t been officially greenlit by its studio. This isn’t the first time O’Connor has talked about wanting to extend the story into a trilogy, but O’Connor seems much more confident the third film is happening now.
“We’ve been now kicking the tires on what that story is. So, we’ll be doing that next,” the director revealed.
The Accountant 2, which currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 86%, also brings back Jon Bernthal as Wolff’s brother Braxton. Reviews from SXSW describe The Accountant 2 as more of a buddy comedy than a serious action film and the change in tone seems to have gone down well with the festival audience.
We’ll bring you more on The Accountant 3 as we hear it.
The Accountant 2 is in cinemas 25th April.
