One of the biggest success stories at the box office right now is Rian Johnson's Knives Out. The film has made nearly $250 million worldwide and while that's not nearly as much as some recent blockbusters, since it also cost a lot less than those blockbusters to make, it's safely into profitable territory.
The movie's success makes it one of the biggest hits of the year not part of a franchise. However, it appears that is about to change, as Johnson has confirmed that he is now working on a Knives Out sequel which would see the return of Daniel Craig's detective Benoit Blanc for an all new mystery.
Johnson confirmed the news to THR prior to last nights Golden Globe awards. Knives Out was nominated for a few awards and while it went home empty handed, that likely hasn't dampened anybody's spirit to make the new film, as Johnson apparently wants to jump on the project and get to work on it within the next year.
Rian Johnson didn't go into any specific as to what this sequel would be about, but one assumes it would be another whodunit where Daniel Craig's character, private detective Benoit Blanc, gets involved in a brand new case. If the sequel can put together another great cast of suspects as Knives Out did, then we could certainly be in for another entertaining mystery.
Of course, Knives Out, while having all the elements of a classic mystery, also played with the formula in a number of ways. While Daniel Craig's detective was the one investigating the mystery, he wasn't actually the main character of the movie. The story is told from the perspective of one of the suspects, played by Ana de Armas. It will be interesting to see if a Knives Out sequel switches this to be a more traditional plot that focuses on the detective, or if we could see something entirely new from the mind of Rian Johnson.
It looks like Rian Johnson is planning to jump right into the Knives Out sequel as his next project. The only other project Johnson has on the horizon that we know of is his Star Wars trilogy, but the exact situation with those films is unclear at this point. As far as we know, they are still happening, but they're also not the next Star Wars films we're expecting to see.
Assuming the movies do happen, Rian Johnson has some time before he'll be jumping into them, but it could be the reason Johnson wants to move on the Knives Out sequel so quickly is that he wants to be sure he can get it done before he needs to turn his attention to the galaxy far, far, away.
Daniel Craig is about to finish his run as James Bond, but it appears he'll be replacing that with another potentially recurring role. For those of us who were fans of Knives Out, that sounds just about perfect.
