While talk surrounding Ben Affleck these days mostly revolves around his role as Batman, the actor is lining up a sequel of a very different sort. Per Deadline, Affleck is in talks to reprise his role in a sequel to last year’s solid thriller The Accountant alongside returning director Gavin O’Connor and returning screenwriter Bill Dubuque. Those deals, including those of producers Lynette Howell Taylor and Mark Williams, are being worked out now, but once they’re settled they’ll move on to solidifying the story. Deadline notes that The Accountant 2 will likely involve the return of Jon Bernthal, who played the hitman brother of Affleck’s character in the first film.

Affleck played an autistic accountant in the first movie who also led a double life as a hitman for hire. It was a pleasantly surprising film—an action thriller with a brain, almost like an adaptation of a great page-turning novel that doesn't exist. The film grossed a solid $155.1 million worldwide, which is fine but doesn’t exactly scream “sequel” so it’s curious to see Warner Bros. putting this follow-up together.

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Image via Warner Bros.

The only other projects on Affleck’s active docket at the moment are Justice League, for which he’s in the midst of reshoots under the direction of Joss Whedon, and of course The Batman, which has Matt Reeves directing after Affleck bowed out of the director’s chair. The Batman doesn’t yet have a release date or start-date, and Reeves is currently in the midst of releasing War for the Planet of the Apes, so hard development on that film under Reeves hasn’t even begun yet. It’s possible Affleck does The Batman next year, or it’s possible he gets to The Accountant 2 first while development continues on The Batman.

The Accountant was one of a handful of projects that made Affleck delay his directorial Argo follow-up Live by Night. First he pushed it to work with David Fincher on Gone Girl, then Batman, and then The Accountant. The latter seemed like the stranger choice, but Affleck surely sparked to the character and/or O’Connor and seems to have had fun making the film as well.

O’Connor has a few other projects in development, including a Green Hornet reboot at Paramount and the former Matt Damon vehicle Father Daughter Time. Once deals are complete for The Accountant 2 we’ll have a better idea of the timeline, but this is a sequel I’ll definitely see.

 

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.