Rounders 2 Won’t be Made Says Matt Damon

It has been on the wishlist of every poker player for the best part of two decades now, but a sequel to the iconic movie Rounders simply won’t happen according to Matt Damon – the poker-playing Hollywood star lamenting that what passes for good cinema nowadays requires studios to “spend $400 million and blow a lot of shit up”.

Rounders became a cult classic not long after its release back in 1998, a timely and darkly honest look at the guts of the poker playing lifestyle, Matt Damon’s character ‘Mike McDermott’ resolving to stay away from the game in which he lost his lifesavings to John Malkovich’s unforgettable ‘Teddy KGB’ creation.

Forced back into poker to help recently-released-from-prison and debt-ridden friend ‘Worm’ – played by Edward Norton – the movie traces themes such as integrity, desire, guilt and fear through the lens of the poker world. Nowadays, says Damon, it simply won’t work.

“There was a DVD market, and that evaporated. It’s gone,” Damon related recently on The Bill Simmons Podcast, having spoken to a Hollywood studio head about it: “Fifty percent of business has been cannibalized. It’s just technology. There are different ways to deliver this stuff.”

He explained further: “That’s why they won’t make Rounders anymore…" despite plenty of talk and hopeful signs over the years, with Rounders 2 still marked as ‘in development’ on the imdb website.

"The international box office” is to blame, says Damon, with “movies that are big and really understandable to people all around the world, across language and culture… white hat, black hat, superheroes. It makes total sense, right? Everybody knows who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. They spend $400 million and blow a lot of shit up.”

He admits somewhat sadly:

“You can’t put Rounders into a movie theater up against that stuff!”

If someone out there can somehow write a Rounders 2 that ticks all the boxes for Hollywood’s ‘needs and wants list’, the poker world would be eternally grateful – but for now, we’ll just have to be thankful for what we have – the ageless Rounders.