With the release of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery scheduled in only a few days, writer/director Rian Johnson is already talking about future sequels and how much fun he can have making them. The whodunit is a genre that can be mixed with other genres and Johnson is teasing some ideas that he has for what can possibly come next.
When Daniel Craig played Detective Benoit Blanc investigating the death of crime novelist Harlan Thrombey, the rest of the cast included Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Toni Collette, and of course Jamie Lee Curtis. It was a box office hit screaming for a sequel that has finally come.
Craig reprises his role as Detective Blanc who is now investigating another death on the private island of tech billionaire Miles Bron played by Edward Norton. This time, the cast includes Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Lionel Toussaint, and Ethan Hawke along with a slew of other power hitters including Madelyn Cline, Jessica Henwick, Dave Bautista, Serena Williams, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hugh Grant, and Angela Lansbury.
Speaking with Slashfilm recently, Johnson explored his other ideas for the franchise.
“Oh man. Well, as soon as I say them I’ll have to do them because I get excited. I mean, that’s what’s exciting about the whodunit genre and thinking about what Agatha Christie did: There are so many different variations. And another thing that she did, which I think is also quite exciting, is the idea of mixing genres. It’s kind of a genre that can take other genres inside of it. But there’s the more traditional locked-door mystery, which I haven’t quite exactly done yet. Kind of the John Dickson Carr style of impossible crime puzzle box-type thing.”
It’s a genre that doesn’t know how to fail. Fans have loved the whodunit type mysteries since before even Agatha Christie started writing them. Of course, hers are a fan favorite because she was the master at weaving a seemingly impossible mystery, and the amazing reveal in every ending is exactly what Johnson is trying to capture.
Like Christie, Johnson likes the opportunities taking Knives Out on the road affords him.
“There’s also any number of exotic locales you could go. You could go to the top of a mountain. You could go to go the desert. You could have a lot of different backgrounds for these things. And then also look at, I mean, Agatha Christie’s Endless Night was basically a gothic romance. Her And Then There Were None is basically a slasher movie. The ABC Murders is truly a serial killer thriller. I mean, there are so many sub-genres that you can work into it. I don’t know, the possibilities seem kind of endless.”
Yes, they do. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will be in theaters on Nov. 23rd for one week only before it streams on Netflix at the end of December.
You can read our review here.