When The Accountant opened in the United States on October 14, 2016, it arrived after two earlier dates had been dropped. Ten years on, Gavin O’Connor’s action thriller, written by Bill Dubuque and starring Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick and J. K. Simmons, still has fans asking for a sequel. Here are eight details from the film’s production, release and reception.
Shot on 35mm film to keep costs down
Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey said the film wasn’t shot digitally because of budget restraints. The team realised the discipline of shooting on film could be as cost-effective, if not cheaper, than digital once post-processing and terabytes of data were considered. They used Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 stock on a Panaflex Millennium XL2 with Panavision Primo lenses for a 2.40:1 widescreen image. McGarvey said: “The beauty of Kodak 5219 500T negative is the latitude it gives you on-set, and later in the colour grade.”
Pencak silat powered the fights
The action sequences featured the Indonesian martial art Pencak silat. Sam Hargrave served as second unit director and stunt coordinator while principal photography ran from January 19 to April 2, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Warner Bros. moved the date twice
The studio first scheduled the film for January 29, 2016, then October 7, 2016, before it settled into October 14, 2016. Filming had already taken place at the Georgia Institute of Technology from March 16–20, 2015.
Thursday previews beat Gone Girl
The Accountant made $1.35 million from Thursday-night previews, more than Affleck’s Gone Girl, which took $1.2 million in 2014. It grossed $9.1 million on its first day and $24.7 million in its opening weekend, finishing first at the box office. That debut was the second-highest for a thriller of Affleck’s career, behind Gone Girl’s $37.5 million.
The box office added up worldwide
The film grossed $86.3 million in the United States and Canada and $68.9 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $155.2 million against a $44 million production budget. In its second weekend, it earned $13.6 million, a drop of 44.8%, and finished fourth.
Home viewers made it the top rental of 2017
It was released on Digital HD on December 27, 2016, and on Blu-ray and DVD on January 10, 2017. Between January and March 2017, the film sold 463,367 DVDs and 313,279 Blu-rays for $19.2 million. In April 2018, the MPAA reported it was the top-rented film of 2017 for both disc and digital.
Critics split, audiences went higher
Rotten Tomatoes reported 53% of 285 critics’ reviews were positive, with an average rating of 5.7/10, while Metacritic assigned 51 out of 100 from 45 critics. Audiences were warmer: CinemaScore gave the film an A, and PostTrak showed 84% overall positive with 64% saying they would definitely recommend it. Vince Mancini of Uproxx wrote that The Accountant had ‘by far the most franchise potential’ of Affleck’s two 2016 films, The Accountant and Batman v Superman.
A sequel and a third film are in the works
In June 2017, a sequel was announced with Gavin O’Connor returning to direct and Bill Dubuque writing. By September 2021, O’Connor said the sequel had been green-lit while a third film was also being written. The sequel was released on April 25, 2025, and plans for a third film are underway.
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Facts from Wikipedia: The Accountant (2016 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Film images from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.