The estranged brotherly duo of Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal is back for “The Accountant 2.”
Ahead of the film’s worldwide premiere at this year’s South by Southwest Film & Television Festival on March 8, “The Accountant 2” has released an official trailer, showing Christian Wolff (Affleck) back in action as the autistic accountant who works to uncook the books. In this new film, he is recruited to help solve a murder case by a treasury agent (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). In order to get to the bottom of the matter, the emotionally distant Christian must reconnect with his brother, Brax (Bernthal), after the events of the first film.
The first film brought in $155 million worldwide for Warner Bros on a budget of $44 million. But despite the mid-budget success of the first film, Vanity Fair reported that “The Accountant 2” was stuck in development for eight years, the process of which director Gavin O’Connor described as “brutal. It just felt like this flower that was ready to bloom, and then it would stop again and start again. It was so frustrating.”
O’Connor returns to direct a new script from “The Accountant” writer Bill Dubuque, who also has credits on “Ozark” and “The Judge.” O’Connor described to Vanity Fair that for the sequel, he “wanted to make an emotional film and also not just an action movie, which I would find wildly boring and uninteresting. An action movie that dealt with human connection and love was something that I really wanted to explore.”
“The Accountant 2” releases in theaters April 25 from Amazon MGM. Watch the trailer below.
