Ben Affleck reveals why fans had to wait almost a decade for The Accountant 2

While some of the best-known sequels have been released within a couple of years of their first instalments, The Accountant fans had to wait an excruciating nine years for the second movie.

The first film, released in 2016, was new, bold, and interesting. Was it action-packed? Yes. But there was more to it than just gunfire and fisticuffs as Ben Affleck made his debut as the ever-mysterious Christian Wolff.

The Accountant got somewhat mediocre reviews from critics, but it was the fans went on to make it the popular movie that it is today. In fact, The Accountant was the most rented film of 2017 in the US, beating the the likes of Moana, Rogue One, and Wonder Woman.

With these figures in mind, it was clear there was scope for a sequel — but why did we have to wait nearly a decade to get one?

Ben Affleck seen as Christian Wolff in 2016 movie The Accountant (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Well, Affleck himself lifted the lid on this and revealed all to UNILAD ahead of the highly anticipated movie's release on April 25.

"Things don't happen on the schedule we want them to I find in life," Affleck shared.

"They wanted they wanted to develop as a television series. And that actually, for studios like — particularly if you're Warner Brothers where you have Warner's television — they're often more lucrative, more long term, and more sustainable."

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Noting this, Affleck went on to say that there was once a 'real possibility' that The Accountant would become a TV series.

"For a long time they fooled around with trying to develop that," he said. "I would have been an executive producer on it, but that wasn't the interest that I had in it."

Then Warner Brothers 'evolved a number of times in terms of both ownership and strategy', Affleck explained, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic and streaming platforms changing the way the movie industry once worked.

But all this allowed time for the 'dust to settle' and for Gavin O'Connor and Bill Dubuque to come up with a kick ass script for another Accountant movie.

Gavin O'Connor and Ben Affleck collaborated again on The Accountant 2 (Eric Charbonneau/Amazon MGM Studios via Getty Images)

Affleck said: "Gavin and Bill had a script that they had been working on that they really liked, and they brought it to me. At the time, I'd just started Artists Equity [a production company he co-founded with close friend and fellow actor Matt Damon]."

"It was very lucky that we were that company evolved at the right time," he continued, "and I was able to, you know, remove the few sort of hurdles that prevented it from happening and strike some deals that made it possible."

While it has seemingly been a pain-staking process to get The Accountant 2 made, Affleck thinks the years-long wait actually worked in their favor.

He mused: "I think maybe it served us, because we had waited a long time and everybody had a more fully evolved idea of what they wanted to do."

The Accountant 2 is now playing in cinemas.