This week, Ben Affleck is back to crunch numbers and henchmen’s bones alongside his on-screen brother Jon Bernthal in The Accountant 2. But as much as the film’s director, Gavin O’Connor, promises a threequel a lot sooner than it took to bring the latest instalment to life, there’s also another project he’s determined to get out of the pipeline – a television spin-off to his beloved MMA movie, Warrior.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, O’Connor revealed that he has had hopes of getting a show following the 2011 film, starring Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton. “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 revealed, referring to the film that is now considered one of the best sports movies ever made. “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.”
Much like the fighters at the center of the original underdog film, it wasn’t for lack of trying, as O’Connor went to two major companies to get it off the ground. “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,” assured the director. “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.”
As for The Accountant, O’Connor anticipates the wheels to turn a little faster with that franchise and the further adventures of Christian Wolff. “We always intended it to be a trilogy, and we’re having conversations, so it will not be another nine years before we do our third one,” O’Connor already has plans for Affleck’s assassin. “Chris needs to find love. So I want to be able to give Christian that by the end of the third movie.” Speaking of Affleck, here’s our list of his greatest movies, even though it doesn’t include Phantoms, in which he was the bomb.
