Poker Movie Buffs Can Rejoice: Rounders 2 is in the Works
For an entire generation of poker players, Rounders is often cited as the pivotal poker flick that defined an era.
With Rounders 2 now slated to be made (a script has already been written), those who cherished the first incarnation of the film have something to look forward to, with some of the film’s original actors on tap to appear in the redux, according to indiewire.com’s blog.
Film ushered in a period of massive poker popularity
Though the original movie released way back in 1998 was by no measure a box office hit, it went on to become a cult classic.
Rounders’ release coincided with the rise of online poker in the U.S. and has been credited – at least in some small part – as having contributed to the immense popularity the game of poker experienced during the first decade of the 2000’s.
The 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event winner, Chris Moneymaker, has said that the film inspired him to begin playing no limit hold ’em to the exclusion of other games. The Georgia native famously went on to win the 2003 bracelet and $2.5 million.
2010 deal made sequel a possibility
A deal reached back in 2010 that saw The Weinstein company securing rights to produce follow-ups to some of their biggest hits of the 1990’s – Shakespeare in Love, Bad Santa, and of course, Rounders, just to name a few – has made the long talked-about plan to create Rounders 2 a reality.
Harvey Weinstein has said that stars Edward Norton and Matt Damon are on board with the reboot, and that Robert DeNiro is a likely candidate to replace John Malkovich as the story’s token bad guy.
“I’ve discussed making ‘Rounders 2’ with Matt Damon and I would say that’s going to be instantaneous. The guys [writers David Levien and Brian Koppelman] have a great idea, a way to make it more international where you start the card game in Paris, that’s all I want to say,” Harvey Weinstein said.
“There might be a certain beautiful Parisian actress involved in it, and then we’re off to the racetrack and Vegas with Matty and Edward Norton, and a new supervillain to replace John Malkovich,” he remarked.
The writers of the first Rounders film, Levien and Koppelman, said in 2010 that certain details of the sequel weren’t yet worked out.
“We’ve talked a lot about doing “Rounders 2” when we were making “Ocean’s 13″ and we were working with Matt again. We talked about it a lot and Edward came by and we had meetings and we called John Dahl, and he’s in to do the sequel. It’s just a question of when we’re going to do it, when we have the exact angle in,” they were quoted as saying at the time.
In the interim, the duo released last fall’s online poker thriller Runner Runner, a Ben Affleck / Justin Timberlake vehicle that was an enormous flop with critics, the public, and the online poker community.
