Rian Johnson May Make Another Murder Mystery With Daniel Craig, Still Working On 'Star Wars'
The Rian Johnson mystery Knives Out just debuted on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival, and you can read our glowing review right here. But if you're already hoping to see even more of Daniel Craig's detective character, there's good news: Johnson sounds interested in reuniting with the actor for additional murder mysteries in the future.
Oh, and yes, Johnson is still working on those Star Wars spinoffs. Read his comments from a new interview below.
Star Wars Spinoffs Still in the Works
Let's get this out of the way: Johnson is still working on a Star Wars spin-off trilogy for Disney and Lucasfilm. But it sounds like his films are still a long way off, because he's still conceptualizing exactly what they're going to be.
"I'm where I can't say anything about it," he told Uproxx. "Still completely in process with it....'It's a process' means it's a process. So that means it could change, it could shift. There are a bunch of moving parts with it."
We're nearing the end of 2019, so if Johnson is still in such an early stage with his spin-offs, is there a chance David Benioff and D.B. Weiss's first Star Wars entry arrives in theaters first? It's probably still too early to tell, but after The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters this December, we know that three new still-untitled Star Wars films will release on the pre-Christmas weekend every other year beginning in 2022.
More Rian Johnson Mysteries?
While I loved The Last Jedi and am looking forward to whatever else Johnson does in the Star Wars galaxy, my immediate attention is zeroed in on Knives Out, his A-list murder mystery that stars Daniel Craig as eccentric detective Benoit Blanc. In that same Uproxx interview, Johnson was asked if he thinks he'll do another Knives Out-type of film, and he responded:
"I'll tell you, the truth is I had such a great time working with Daniel Craig and I had so much fun doing this on every level, from writing it to making it. I've never really been interested in doing sequels, but this, the idea of doing more of these with Daniel as his character, is not sequels. It's just what Agatha Christie did. It's just coming up with a whole new mystery, a whole new location, all new cast, whole new mechanics of the appeal of a mystery and everything. It'd be a blast."
Agatha Christie, the best-selling author whose famous mystery novels were the primary inspiration for Knives Out, created the character of Hercule Poirot, her own super-smart detective, back in 1916 when she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles (which was published in 1920). Poirot, a Belgian detective who used Sherlock Holmes-level powers of observation and deduction to solve baffling crimes, appeared in 33 novels over the next 55 years, many of which were adapted into movies. (Director/star Kenneth Branagh is currently working on his next Poirot film Death on the Nile, a follow-up to his version of Murder on the Orient Express.) And don't forget about Miss Marple, another of Christie's famous literary detectives who appeared in 13 novels of her own.
I haven't seen Knives Out myself yet, but as a big fan of the genre, I love the idea of Johnson continuing in that tradition and reuniting with Craig to drop him into wholly new murder mystery scenarios. Johnson is a master at genre-hopping, but he's always had a penchant for including mysteries in his movies, and to see him make a home in this genre (while still expanding the galaxy far, far away) would indeed be "a blast" to watch.
Knives Out arrives in theaters on November 27, 2019.