Spoilers follow.

You never really know what will become a franchise. Studios like Warner Bros. will greenlight a mid-budget movie that has some star power to carry its premise. It won't do record-breaking numbers, but it'll turn a nice profit to have made the entire venture worth it. Nearly a decade or so down the line, whether because of a creative spark or simply for monetary reasons, a late sequel will go into production to capitalize on the IP. Sometimes they're massive successes that surpass the original ("The Strangers: Prey at Night") and other times they're "Zoolander No. 2." You never really know whether an audience will want to spend time with the same characters so far detached from the first film, but "The Accountant 2" is here to gauge that interest.

Gavin O'Connor's 2016 action-drama "The Accountant" is a bizarre movie that doesn't always work, but there's a lot...