Following two years of calamitous fan wars over his film Star Wars: The Last Jedi, director Rian Johnson returned last holiday season with a very different kind of film – one that was nearly universally well-received.
Knives Out, a humorous whodunit that both paid homage to the Agatha Christie/Clue genre and worked on its own as a standalone story, was a reasonably sized hit, and earned Johnson an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. And now, it’s getting a sequel.
The movie’s studio, Lionsgate, announced on its earnings call this week that it’s moving forward with a second Knives Out film. According to Deadline, CEO Jon Feltheimer indicated that production on the sequel isn’t that far off.
A fourth John Wick film, the executive said, will also begin production soon, with a release date already set for May 21, 2021.
Much remains unclear about the second Knives Out – its title, its release date, whether Johnson will both write and direct, and whether the new film will return its entire cast or only Daniel Craig’s “gentleman private eye” character, Benoit Blanc. It’s also unclear what the announcement means for Johnson’s planned Star Wars trilogy, or whether Craig is officially done playing James Bond.
We do know that both Craig and Johnson have expressed interest in making a sequel, with the director indicating that he’s already begun writing.
Whatever form the film takes, the idea of Craig’s private eye parachuting into another case, in another part of the country, with another eccentric wealthy family, has virtually unlimited potential for future films. A film set on a train? Or in Europe?
It’s like a donut hole within a smaller donut with its own hole:
The original Knives Out, which also starred Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, and Christopher Plummer, debuted on the festival circuit last fall before arriving in theaters after Thanksgiving.
