Matt Damon is all in on wanting to make a sequel to his 1998 poker-focused drama feature Rounders.
The actor was a guest on Roku Channel‘s The Rich Eisen Show on Wednesday, where the host asked Damon if there are any movies of his own that could get sequels. Damon noted that Actors Equity, the production company that he founded with Ben Affleck, is behind the forthcoming The Accountant 2, which stars Affleck. But regarding his own projects, Damon said he would love to revisit director John Dahl’s Rounders, which focused on underground, high-stakes poker tournaments and co-starred Edward Norton, John Turturro, John Malkovich and Gretchen Mol.
“The one that we’ve been talking about for years — and I just saw Edward Norton a few weeks ago, [and] all of us want to do it — is a second Rounders movie,” Damon said. “Because so much has happened in that poker world in the last 25 years, it would be fun to catch up with those guys.”
Sadly, the hang-up appears to be dealing with rights issues for the movie that Miramax Films released on Sept. 11, 1998. “You’ve got to figure out the chain of title and who owns it, and everybody’s got their hand in the pot,” the star said. “So we’ve got to figure out a way to make a deal that makes sense for everybody, particularly the people who are going to make the movie because at Artists Equity, that’s who we care about, are the cast and crew. We’re trying to figure that out because I think we’d all like to do that.”
Damon recalled having chatted 10 or 15 years ago with the film’s screenwriters David Levien and Brian Koppelman, who would go on to create the Showtime series Billions, and that the scribes had an idea in mind for a follow-up. However, Damon feels that the ways in which the real-life poker scene has evolved over recent years would mean a sequel concept could use a bit of a refresh.
“What they had 10 years ago, I thought, was fantastic, and I’m sure they could augment and roll with the times and update it to where we are today and make something great,” he continued.
Damon — who is currently promoting his role in Apple’s The Instigators — pointed out that, although Rounders underperformed at the box office in its day, it has more recently cultivated a devoted fan base.
“That’s one of those movies that, it came out and didn’t do well,” he said. “When it came out, it kind of bombed, and then it got discovered by people later. When that happens, people feel a sense of ownership, like, ‘Hey, that’s my movie. I was a champion of that movie even when no one else was.’ So it feels like there’s a lot of good will behind it. But we gotta figure out if we can make it happen.”
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