Star Matt Damon, who appeared in the 1998 poker drama Rounders with Edward Norton, is keen on making a sequel.
It’s not uncommon for an actor to be out on the press circuit and be questioned about a film they’d love to do a sequel for. However, when that actor has their own production company, any answer they give has a much greater chance of actually happening. Recently on The Rich Eisen Show, Matt Damon was asked that very question and he didn’t have to think too hard about his response.
“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, as picked up by The Hollywood Reporter. “Because so much has happened in that poker world in the last 25 years, it would be fun to catch up with those guys.”
If you haven’t had the pleasure, Rounders is one of – if not the – elite movie about guys playing cards in dark, smoke-filled rooms. Released in 1998, it caught both of its stars in the upswing of their Hollywood fame. Damon was in the middle of a celebrated run that had already included Good Will Hunting and Saving Private Ryan, and his next couple of films would be The Talented Mr Ripley and Dogma. Likewise, his co-star Edward Norton starred in American History X in the same year before going on to co-star in Fight Club in 1999.
The supporting cast wasn’t half-bad either: Gretchen Mol, John Turturro, John Malkovich, Famke Janssen all lent their talents to the drama about a ‘young, reformed gambler returning to playing high stakes poker to help his friend pay off loan sharks, while balancing his relationship with his girlfriend and his commitments to law school.’
Damon has his own production company in the form of Artists Equity, an outfit formed on the ideal of securing better deals for all involved with the production of a film, both above – and below – the line. As he tries to sort out the knotty rights to the original film – which was owned by Miramax Films (a company which has since changed hands), Damon is conscious that acquiring those rights needs to come at a price, which means his production company can make a Rounders sequel in a manner that means everybody gets a fair deal.
“You’ve got to figure out the chain of title and who owns it, and everybody’s got their hand in the pot,” the actor 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: the cast and crew. We’re trying to figure that out because I think we’d all like to do that.”
So there you go. While it’s not a definite deal, wheels are definitely turning, and should things work out, perhaps we’ll see Damon and Norton reunite onscreen for more of the entertaining hustling, cardsharping and squabbling that Rounders gave us back in the late 90s.
Damon is also right in stating that much has happened in the world of poker in the last quarter century with it becoming a global, televised event that has skyrocketed in popularity. That certainly offers a potential sequel some tantalising story directions. We’ll let you know when we hear more.
Matt Damon’s next film via his Artists Equity company is The Instigators, co-starring Casey Affleck and directed by enthusiastic Amazon customer Doug Liman. It’s streaming on AppleTV+ from the 9th August.
