• The Accountant 2 director Gavin O'Connor explains why Anna Kendrick's character doesn't seem within the sequel.
• The filmmaker says he at all times envisioned The Accountant as a trilogy and hopes to carry the Oscar nominee again for the ultimate movie.
• O'Connor breaks down what the third movie could be about, and says that Kendrick has expressed curiosity in returning.

It's not as sure as loss of life and taxes, nevertheless it looks like a 3rd Accountant movie is coming due.

Almost a decade after the sleeper hit first installment debuted, Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal have reteamed with director Gavin O'Connor for The Accountant 2, out this weekend. Affleck returns as Christian Wolff, a high-functioning autistic black market accountant who makes use of his neurodivergency to crack complicated puzzles and take down crime kingpins between submitting tax returns. Bernthal performs his previously estranged brother, Brax, a clingy hitman with a brief fuse.

Noticeably absent from the sequel is Anna Kendrick's Dana Cummings, an accountant Wolff helps and finally develops emotions for within the first movie. Whereas her character is rarely talked about within the follow-up, O'Connor says we’d not have seen the final of her — or the Wolff brothers.

"We at all times needed it to be three films," O'Connor tells Leisure Weekly. "When [screenwriter] Invoice [Dubuque] and I began speaking in regards to the second film, it was essential that we didn't desire a love story. We needed a love story with brothers. We needed to do a 48 Hours or Midnight Run sort of buddy image."

O'Connor factors out that within the first movie, Braxton and Christian "don't even meet one another till the third act, and it's violent." With the sequel, the director says he needed to "discover their relationship and allow them to attempt to repair their stuff," including, "I knew that there have been alternatives for comedy to be mined out of there, and in addition for emotion to be mined out of there. In order that was very intentional."

He continues, "Then the third film, which is what the plan has at all times been, is for [Chris'] quest for love and connection to be consummated. I don't know what that's going to be but, however that's the intention."

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As for why Kendrick's Cummings doesn't seem within the sequel, O'Connor says there simply wasn't sufficient room for her story. "Yeah. I imply, how do I carry Anna into the second after which ignore her?" he says. "The entire level was exploring the brothers and that emotional line between them. That was at all times the intention, so she was by no means going to be within the second."

However as soon as he and Dubuque provide you with a plan for the third movie, O'Connor says the actress is able to return. "We've had conversations. She desires to do it. We simply have to determine the right way to do it," he says.

Nonetheless, that may take a while. Whereas there have been a variety of causes it took practically 10 years to make the sequel — together with a pandemic, trade strikes, and studio shakeups — O'Connor notes that it's not really easy developing with puzzles that solely Wolff can resolve.

"I gotta be sincere, I'm so bored with these Byzantine puzzle plots," the director says with amusing. "It's actually arduous to do…If it's a straightforward plot, you don't want Christian." Whereas the story "can't be so confounding that the viewers checks out," the filmmaker says it must be difficult sufficient to justify Wolff's brainpower.

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Or, possibly O'Connor will go a totally totally different path subsequent time. "I feel I could do a highway image or one thing, refresh simply as a lot as we refreshed the tank on the second film."

On the finish of the day, the director says, "I'm going to in all probability do one thing that makes me to return to work day by day and inform a narrative. After which, lastly, sure, if it's going to be Anna, Chris wants to seek out love and discover connection and go off into the sundown. So it in all probability might be with Dana Cummings."

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