Rian Johnson‘s whodunnit “Knives Out” helped re-establish the filmmaker after the successful but fan-polarizing “Star Wars” installment, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” It gave us a fantastic new detective with Daniel Craig charming Southern crime novelist Benoit Blanc, a tongue-in-cheek take on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. “Knives Out” landed at MRC in a single picture deal and distributed by Lionsgate, but there is word that streaming giant Netflix is aiming to nab sequels.
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A new report coming from Deadline states that Netflix is nearing a historic $400 million deal to acquire two yet-to-be-titled “Knives Out” sequels from the writer/director. If everything comes together, we’ll see both Daniel Craig and Johnson return for both films, with the first sequel said to begin shooting on June 28 in Greece.
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Other notable suitors mentioned were Apple and Amazon. We’ve known about Rian’s plans for a sequel for a while now, but this third film is a wonderful surprise. We’re still in the dark about the plot details of these other two mysteries, however, but just their existence is good enough for now.
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The star-studded cast of the original caught the attention of audiences, and it didn’t hurt it had a great marketing campaign that led to it earning $311.4 million at the worldwide box office with a budget of $40 million. There are already expectations that Rian will wrangle another impressive group of actors for the sequel, and there was a fun meme on Twitter to come up with the next title a few years back that went viral.
At the same time, Johnson is said to be developing an original “Star Wars” trilogy, but there hasn’t been a concrete update from Lucasfilm about when they’ll begin shooting those pics. While he’s recently reiterated the films are coming eventually, there’ still a lot of skepticism in the “Star Wars” community they will ever arrive given the way ‘The Rise of Skywalker,’ undied so much of the work of his ‘The Last Jedi.’ He’s also teaming with “Russian Doll” star Natasha Lyonne for a new mystery series, titled “Poker Face,” for Peacock.
Meanwhile, Craig is ending his James Bond tenure once “No Time To Die” is released in October, and it allows him to commit to a budding franchise like “Knives Out.” We could end up seeing Daniel play Benoit Blanc in other installments beyond this trilogy; who knows.