Dear Gossips,
FINALLY, a sequel to The Accountant is actually happening! And it’s NOT at Warner Bros. Discovery! Yesterday, Deadline reported that Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, JK Simmons, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson are all returning for The Accountant 2, which will be directed by Gavin O’Connor and written by Bill Dubuque, the duo behind the first film. The gang’s all here!
The Accountant is a classic dumb-fun movie, about an autistic CPA who is a secret assassin on the side. It’s a highly questionable portrayal of autism that I do not defend at all, but it’s so good at being a dumb-fun action movie, it’s become a very popular streaming movie after a respectable box office run in 2016. It’s the digital equivalent of the cheesy action movies that used to play on basic cable on weekend afternoons. In twenty years, some young actor is going to say The Accountant is their favorite movie and some dweeb on whatever passes for the internet in the future is going to be all “just say you like Toy Story 37”.
The Accountant 2 is being made through Artists Equity, the studio Affleck co-founded with Matt Damon with the intention of producing and distributing films using a more equitable profit-sharing model than the current studio model on offer. Air was the first movie they made under their own banner, and they’ve also done The Greatest Love Story Never Told and Cillian Murphy’s post-Oppenheimer film, Small Things Like These, among others. I would be curious to see some of the accounting for Artists Equity and see if they’re living up to their promise.
The Accountant was distributed by Warner Brothers, but Affleck and the Artists Equity team bought the sequel rights from Warner Bros. Discovery and took the project to Amazon MGM, where they’re currently having a good run. There is absolutely no mention of this, but I am choosing to believe they just don’t want to work for David Zaslav. Unless and until someone says otherwise, I will believe this.
I will also believe The Accountant 2 is a crossover with The Beekeeper. The plot description has it that while solving a murder, the Accountant “draw[s] the attention of some of the most ruthless killers alive”. Is it Beekeepers?! It’s Beekeepers, isn’t it! I already wholly believe these movies exist in the same universe, even if The Accountant 2 isn’t a crossover, The Accountant 3 SHOULD be. And there should be a third Accountant movie, if there was any inherent goodness in the world, we’d have 17 of these movies already. I want a whole franchise about various nerds who are secretly assassins, and the whole thing culminates when John Wick shows up and we find out it’s been the John Wick universe all along! Forget the MCU, I am here for the SNACU (Secret Nerd Assassin Cinematic Universe).
Here are Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez out with their kids yesterday.
Live long and gossip,
Sarah
