Gavin O’Connor walked quite the tonal tightrope on The Accountant 2. 

In 2018, the filmmaker initiated development on a follow-up to his Ben Affleck-led sleeper hit from two years earlier. Alongside franchise screenwriter Bill Dubuque, they decided to tackle human trafficking inside a buddy action-comedy about Christian (Affleck) and Braxton Wolff’s (Jon Bernthal) fraternal reconnection. O’Connor was well aware of the “tall tonal order” in front of him, but after his previous Affleck drama, The Way Back (2020), opened in theaters just five days before the pandemic shut down the country, he knew he also wanted to give audiences some theater-friendly popcorn entertainment. 

The sequel’s story still has some of the darker undertones of the predecessor, namely in the form of a central mystery involving a fractured Salvadoran family that fled the MS-13 gang violence of their native El Salvador for the States. The subplot bears at least some resemblance to the current headlines about the family of Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and O’Connor admits that it’s been bizarre to see his long-gestating sequel become this relevant in real time. (The nature of Affleck’s autistic vigilante accountant character has its own newfound relevance, as well.)

“It’s not new that people are determined to leave the violence and poverty of that country to come to America and start a new life. It’s a country that Bill and I had read about and researched, and it just felt like the right place,” O’Connor tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of April 25’s theatrical release. “Shining a light on it and putting that up on screen was just really important to me. But it was very tricky, tonally, to straddle that line and still try to make a fun movie.”

O’Connor is determined to complete an Accountant trilogy, and he’s confident that the threequel won’t take the better part of a decade like the sequel. 

“We always intended it to be a trilogy, and we’re having conversations [with Amazon], so it will not be another nine years before we do our third one,” O’Connor stresses. “Chris [Affleck] needs to find love. So I want to be able to give Christian that by the end of the third movie.”

O’Connor’s 2011 film, Warrior, continues to be one of the most beloved sports dramas of all time. The MMA story about the Conlon brothers — starring two then-mostly-unknown leads in Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton — underperformed at the box office, grossing $24.2 million against a $25 million budget. However, it’s had a storied post-theatrical afterlife between its near $20 million in estimated DVD/Blu-ray sales and a consistent presence on premium and basic cable channels, as well as streamers. 

O’Connor previously had a spiritual sequel series set up at Paramount+ and HBO Max, respectively, but both streamers dropped out mid-development, likely due to 2022’s major market correction toward streaming. In any event, the Long Island native still hasn’t given up on one of his dream projects. 

“If there’s any project I’ve ever had that is so passionately alive in my bloodstream, it’s this TV series. So I’m hoping I find the right home for it,” O’Connor says. “The DNA of the movie Warrior was two brothers on a collision course to fight each other in the Sparta tournament. So the series is called Warriors because we took that idea for two men and two women. There’s nothing like it on television, so hopefully someone can see what I have in my head.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, O’Connor also discusses why he isn’t optimistic about California’s chances of meaningfully reigniting production, before addressing how a lightsaber ended up in Affleck’s character’s hands.

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In December ‘21, I asked Jon Bernthal about a then-potential Accountant sequel, and he wasn’t ready to count his chickens just yet. 

(Laughs.)

Was there quite a bit of uncertainty as to whether this would actually happen?

Yeah, there’s been uncertainty for years. It’s been a very kafkaesque experience trying to get this movie made, especially considering The Accountant did fairly well at the box office, vis-a-vis the [$44 million] budget that we had on that first movie. It was a pretty profitable film, domestically and globally. So, for a myriad of reasons, there was a lot of starting and stopping, and obstacles kept getting thrown in the way. So it wore on all of us, and while we all passionately wanted to make the movie, I think we were all cautious after all the starts and stops. It just never felt like it was guaranteed to happen. 

You really have a knack for telling fraternal stories. Is there a deep-rooted explanation for this?

I definitely gravitate towards stories of brothers and stories of fathers and sons, so there’s a thematic through-line there. When I look at Warrior, that was a very biographical film in so many ways. As a filmmaker, I’m obviously trying to express myself through story. So [Accountant franchisewriter] Bill Dubuque and I very intentionally wanted to explore the relationship with the two brothers in the second Accountant movie. That was always a very important exercise for us. People have asked about Anna Kendrick’s [absence], but she was never intended to be in the second movie. It was always about bringing the brothers together so they can try to fix things with each other. That’s really what we wanted to explore. These are two guys that are searching for human connection and love, which we can all relate to. So I love the idea of exploring stories of brothers, but I’m very far away from Chris [Wolff] in a lot of ways, and I’m very far away from Braxton [Wolff] in a lot of ways. So [The Accountant 2] is probably a little less personal than some of my other films in regard to the depth of the characters, but not in regard to the emotional through-line of brothers trying to basically find love with each other and acceptance and understanding and hope. 

You upped the comedy rather significantly from the original. Both of the Wolff brothers have hysterical reintroduction scenes. Was this a way to offset the darkness of the human trafficking story that everybody is investigating?

That’s a really good question. Yeah, shining a light on human trafficking was something that was really important to me. But predators feasting on the world’s most vulnerable people doesn’t really make for an entertaining movie. When Ben and I made The Way Back, the movie opened on a Friday, and the theaters closed on Monday [due to the pandemic]. It was just dead in the water, and it was so heartbreaking. So, yes, as much as I wanted to build the plot around human trafficking, I also wanted to make an exuberantly entertaining movie [for theaters]. It was very intentional that I wanted to make a fun, emotional film. In essence, I wanted to make my version of a popcorn movie. That’s really what I was trying to do. It’s not necessarily just a thriller or just an action movie; it has a lot of food groups in it. But ultimately, it’s a story about a search for love and connection that’s always focusing on the characters. 

So the smuggling business part of it was challenging. This idea of people coming here with the dream of living in America and trying to really deal with that honestly was a tall tonal order, while balancing, as you just mentioned, the fun and comedy of the movie. And I honestly didn’t know that I pulled it off. I certainly didn’t know when I was shooting it, though I was tracking it the whole time. It wasn’t clear until I actually showed the movie to Ben. He is the first person who saw [my director’s cut] when I felt like it was ready to be seen. So he called me up, and he was very pleased. He felt like I pulled it off. I then put it up in front of a test screening audience, and that cemented it all because it was very well-received. So it could have gone the other way, brother. It really could have, but fortunately, it didn’t. 

Is this also why you dialed back Christian’s rituals involving death metal, strobe lights and a wooden stick?

No, I just felt like we did that already. I had no interest in repeating what we did before. There were certain DNA elements that we preserved from the first film, but very few. There’s obviously the Airstream and some behavioral details. Bill and I talked a lot about what it should be, architecturally, and what we were going for in terms of plot and theme and the brothers. But the first draft Bill handed me had a lot of homages to the first film, and I remember calling him up and saying, “Dude, I have no interest in repeating what we did already. I really want to just entirely refresh the tank. I want to build on the first one, but I want to do something very different and very new.” So I would’ve been bored just repeating what we did before.

There was already a relevance to this movie, but recent headlines have made it all the more relevant. Having lived with this movie for many years now, is it quite bizarre to see it become so of the moment in real time? 

It is, and we started the ideas of the movie in 2018. That’s when we started having conversations and getting a script going. I wanted to build the movie around human trafficking. Again, that was really important to me, and we knew that [J.K. Simmons’] Ray was going to die at the beginning. That was the key in the ignition of the movie. It makes it personal for everybody. So that was very intentional, as was bringing Braxton into the story at the end of the first act, making it a buddy picture and sort of a 48 Hours film. That’s what was in my head.

My jaw hit the floor when the central family’s country of origin was revealed.

I’m assuming you’re referring to El Salvador?

Precisely. 

Well, it’s not new that people are determined to leave the violence and poverty of that country, like many other Central American and Latin countries, to come to America and start a new life. It’s a country that Bill and I had read about and researched, and it just felt like the right place. Then there’s this arduous, dangerous journey from Central America across Mexico, before reaching the U.S. border and being captured by a drug cartel. This is all real stuff. So we just did a lot of research and tried to deal with that as honestly as possible. Shining a light on it and putting that up on screen was just really important to me. We know what happens to these people. They get forced into prostitution and maid work — jobs that people in America don’t want. But as I said, it was very tricky, tonally, to straddle that line and still try to make a fun movie. There ain’t nothing funny about human trafficking.

You had the good fortune of shooting The Accountant 2 in California, and the local industry is in desperate need of more production opportunities. Are you optimistic that the state will take the necessary steps to ensure that outcome?

​​To be totally honest, with [Gavin] Newsom as our governor, I’m not optimistic about anything with that guy. I feel like he puts his finger up to the wind and parrots whatever is popular in the moment, and then he’ll change his mind and about face when the wind blows the other way. So, sadly, I’m not [optimistic]. But we were always shooting here whether we got the rebate or not, because Ben and I didn’t want to go to Atlanta again. We have families here [in L.A.], so we wanted to stay home. Fortunately, [Affleck and Matt Damon’s] Artists Equity was financing the movie, so it was really Ben’s call. He was gracious enough to be like, “Even if we don’t get [the rebate], we’re shooting here.” And I’m so deeply grateful to him for that. 

We then got an A-plus crew because people were like, “I can work with you guys and go home at night to get in bed with my wife, and be home with my kids on the weekends?” So we had the pick of the litter in regard to the crew, which was fantastic. We had a fantastic group of people working on this film, and there was an esprit de corps that was going on just because [of where we shot]. Everyone worked really hard, obviously, but we were really conscious of getting people home on time. I was always trying to not only make my days, but also do 10-hour days to get people home to their families. That pays huge dividends with a crew, creatively, artistically and spiritually.

I never expected to see Ben Affleck holding a lightsaber in an Accountant movie. Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds had to do this for a movie, but did you guys also have to write a request letter to Disney?

(Laughs.) It’s so funny you bring that up. In the script, Chris calls Brax while sitting on his bed, and going to the set that morning, I was like, “There’s better than that. How do we keep pushing character?” I’m always trying to keep pushing character. So when I got to set, my prop master, J.P. Jones, was the first person I grabbed. I said, “I need a lightsaber. Find me a lightsaber. I’ll push the scene until later in the day.” And you know what? We never asked Disney. I just shot it without getting permission. Fortunately, very fortunately, they were very cool about it, but I ignorantly didn’t even ask for permission. We just shot it.

I was the captain of my high school basketball team, and so I’ve played ball for some flawed individuals in my life. Thus, I connected a great deal with The Way Back. 

(Laughs.) 

Given the weight of that subject matter, I have to imagine that it was a very heavy set. Did The Accountant 2 set have a completely opposite vibe?

There were some really heavy days [on The Way Back], but we also had a lot of fun with the kids. They could all play basketball, and Ben was so great with them. That was the first film I shot digitally. I actually wanted to shoot Super 16, but I got a lot of pushback from Warner Bros. So I started doing tests with the ARRI digital camera and live grain to represent the Super 16 look. We moved really fast. Ben would literally get there in the morning, and he never left set. He just hung out all day and never went back to his trailer. So we were rocking and rolling, and there were scenes that were really intense and heavy. And I love that. I was really happy with how the film came out, but as I said, it was so disappointing when the theaters got shut down. I had a day or two of disappointment, but then I thought, “What the fuck? It’s a movie. People are really suffering with Covid. Who am I to be whining about it?”

[The Accountant 2] felt different because I hired First AD Mariela [Comitini]. This was the first time I’ve ever worked with her, and I will make every movie with her now. She’s a fucking surgeon in regard to building a board and a schedule and moving things around like a puzzle master. She’s brilliant at that, but she’s also so kind and so loving. I always play music on set; that’s something I’ve always done. But she said, “I like to start the day with a song that’s thematic for whatever we’re doing that day.” So once everyone shows up, she blasts a song, she starts to sing, she starts to dance, and then she gets everybody on the crew dancing. So we started every day with a dance party in the morning. We had a blast, and it allowed us to connect. It allowed us to have this comradery, and we all had this love for each other. We really did even though it was a circus. So we really bonded at the start of every day before getting to work, and she was really responsible for setting that fun tone every morning.

Do you still intend to turn TheAccountant into a trilogy?

Yeah, absolutely. We always intended it to be a trilogy, and so we’re having conversations. Ben and I, our producer Lynette [Howell Taylor], and writer Bill [Dubuque], we’re all having conversations with Amazon about that very thing, so it will not be another nine years before we do our third one. Chris needs to find love. That’s what we set up with this character who’s in search of love and human connection. So I want to be able to give Christian that by the end of the third movie.

I’m proud to say that I paid to see Warrior in a movie theater way back when. Is your spinoff series, Warriors, still alive in some capacity? 

When we set it up, it was at Paramount+. We wrote a script, and then, for whatever reason, they decided they wanted to go in a different direction. What happened is all unexplainable to me. But I had a script at this point, and it’s very representative of what the series is going to be. It introduces all the characters except for one. HBO Max then said they wanted to do it, and so we pivoted to HBO Max. And then, for whatever reason, they decided they didn’t want to do it. They were going in a different direction. So I need to find a home, man. Excluding the movie Warrior, if there’s any project I’ve ever had that is so passionately alive in my bloodstream, it’s this TV series. So I’m hoping I find the right home for it. 

The DNA of the movie Warrior was two brothers on a collision course to fight each other in the Sparta tournament. So the series is called Warriors because we took that idea for two men and two women. They’re all fighters, but I hook you into their life fights outside of the cage. We’re going to explore their stories as they’re on a collision course to fight each other at Sparta. So that’s the idea, and I hope we can find a home, because I so believe in this show and what it could be. There’s nothing like it on television, so hopefully someone can see what I have in my head.

Lastly, you produced the 2002 documentary, The Smashing Machine, about mixed martial artist Mark Kerr. Are you eager to see how Benny Safdie translates that story into a narrative feature starring Dwayne Johnson?

I am. Mark Kerr is a friend of mine, so I actually found that out through Mark himself. He called me up, and he was just trying to get some legal advice because it involved his life rights, obviously. So that’s how I found out about it. My First AD, Mariela, is also friends with the producers. I don’t know either of the Safdies, but they’re obviously really good filmmakers. So I’ll be the first person in line to see that when it comes out in the theater.

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The Accountant 2 is now playing in movie theaters nationwide.