SXSW: ‘The Accountant 3’ in the Works

Let me just briefly tackle SXSW. The Austin-based festival is known for having the most welcoming of audiences, of any film festival out there, and that also goes for the critics who attend the event — they tend to be incredibly forgiving of the mediocrities screened.

Every year you have a bunch of SXSW-premiered films that earns raves in Austin only to be more divisively met, or even forgotten, once they hit theaters in the spring and summer.

What’s premiered so far at this year’s SXSW hasn’t necessarily garnered the kind of enthusiasm the festival is known to exude. Yes, you have the usual “critics” on Rotten Tomatoes dishing out fresh scores at a feverish pace, but it’s better to focus on the more reliable aggregate, Metacritic

So, far “Another Simple Favor” (59 on Metacritic), “Death of a Unicorn” (58), and “Holland” (TBD) haven’t been that well-received. Hell, the most buzzy film so far seems to be a Michael Bay directed Parkour documentary (“We Are Storror”). There’s also Babak Avari’s “Hallow Road,” an intriguing looking drama starring Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys.

With that said, critics are also split on Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant 2” which has a 58 on Metacritic, but sits at a decent 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet, I can’t find a single review saying it’s superior to the 2016 original.

“The Accountant 2” couldn’t have been made for more than $50M-$60M, and it’ll easily be making its money back once it hits theaters in April. That’s probably why O’Connor is now confirming that “The Accountant 3” is well on its way, and could be shooting in the very near future.

I told [Affleck], ‘We should make this a trilogy. So what’s the middle chapter?’ That became The Accountant 2, exactly as we envisioned it. And now, we have The Accountant 3 on the way. We’ve been now kicking the tires on what that story is. So, we’ll be doing that next.

“The Accountant” stars Ben Affleck as a highly skilled forensic accountant with autism who also happens to be a deadly assassin. He has a particular set of skills. The sequel also has Jon Bernthal, J.K. Simmons and Daniella Pineda in key roles.

The first one was a well-filmed action no-brainer. Affleck’s ‘John Wick,’ if you will. The film grossed $86M domestically, but more importantly, ended up becoming the most rented film of 2017, it even bested “Moana” (#2) in terms of sales.