Warner Bros.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros is mobilizing a sequel to the 2016 hit The Accountant. Screenwriter Bill Dubuque, director Gavin O’Connor and Ben Affleck are in talks to return, along with the producers Lynette Howell Taylor and Mark Williams. All those deals are being worked out right now. I’m told they will then work out the beats of the story, which likely will include Jon Bernthal, whose character asserted himself at the conclusion of the first film.

The original starred Affleck as the title character, a math savant with high-functioning autism who works as a forensic accountant and un-cooks the books for unsavory criminal organizations under the glare of law enforcement. When a new client put him in danger and the Treasury Department closes in, the title character’s skills as an assassin led to a body count that might have prompted John Wick to say, “Woah.”

The film isn’t the kind that usually makes a studio like Warner Bros rush to sequelize. But on a $44 million budget, it grossed $155 million. It was a clever, unusual crime thriller, and there is room to expand the palate with Bernthal, who played a long-lost bad-guy brother equally capable of creating mayhem thanks to the sadistic military ops father who trained them.

Affleck next stars as Batman in Justice League, which Warner Bros opens November 17. O’Connor is also developing with Imperative Entertainment the WWII thriller Atlantic Wall for Bradley Cooper to star in. WME reps Affleck and O’Connor, and CAA and Zero Gravity Management rep Dubuque.