Early into the year/decade, Rian Johnson gifted the world with a belated holiday present: He told a Hollywood Reporter journalist he was working on a sequel to his whodunnit Knives Out. And now, just over a month later, we have word, courtesy Deadline, that that promise, made off the cuff at the Golden Globes pre-show, has become an official reality, with a production start date “imminent.”
Knives Out was one of the only non-franchise hits of 2019 to make any money, the others including Jordan Peele’s Us and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Taking one of those and turning it into a franchise would ordinarily be a lazy move, but certainly no in this case: Knives Out begged for more mysteries solved by amateur sleuth Benoit Blanc, played by a rarely-more-charming Daniel Craig. (Alas, this does mean its incredibly talented ensemble of non-Benoit Blancs will not be returning, meaning no Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, et al. But that only means we’ll get a whole new cast of possible perps.)
Craig, of course, will soon be done with James Bond, following April’s No Time to Die, and surely it must be much more appealing to step into the shoes of a guy who just solves crimes than it does battling Rami Malek. Even better, Johnson has implied he’d make Craig don a different, presumably wacky accent with each installment. He’s got Southern checked off, so may we suggest an old fashioned, blue-blooded Mid-Atlantic accent à la Grace Kelly or Katharine Hepburn? Or how about one no one ever does, save James McAvoy: the South Philly accent?
(Via Deadline)
