First things first, Knives Out 2 (title pending) is officially done filming. After director Rian Johnson announced the start of shooting back in June, fans were quick to begin speculating on what they could expect from the highly-anticipated sequel. It was already known that Craig’s Detective Blanc would bring his charming southern drawl back this time around, except now he’d be solving a completely new mystery along with a completely new eclectic cast of characters to bounce off. But don’t worry. While there will be some changes, Craig says some things will be familiar.
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Craig recently spoke with Empire about his career in the James Bond franchise and beyond, and the subject inevitably shifted to Knives Out 2. When the interviewer expressed their own excitement for the sequel, Craig seemed to share in the elation as he reminisced about his time with the first movie and looked forward to the future. “I’m so lucky to have Rian [Johnson] in my life,” he said. “He’s such a great writer. That script arrived and I was literally like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I couldn’t believe that he wanted me to play it. I was going, ‘It says southern accent you went here. Really?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah?’ We’ve just finished the second one, literally weeks ago. They’ve just wrapped up in Serbia. Dare I say it’s better? We’ll see. I don’t want to tempt fate. It’s different, and that’s the amazing thing. It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, but it’s very different. I’m very excited about it.”
He certainly knows how to keep fans hyped up. Part of the big appeal of Knives Out was its multitude of clever twists on the classic murder mystery formula. At its heart, it’s a comfy whodunit in the style of legendary stories like Murder on the Orient Express and any number of Sherlock Holmes books. But thanks to Johnson’s penchant for interesting, eccentric characters and details that often take multiple viewings to appreciate, Knives Out almost seemed to revitalize the genre when it wowed the moviegoing public in 2019. It also didn’t hurt that he opted for a star-studded cast in a similar vein to old favorites like 1985’s Clue and the hilarious 1976 parody Murder by Death.
Now, Johnson is looking to keep that trend rolling with the follow-up, and according to Craig’s comments, it may very well surpass its predecessor. But where the director always shines tends to be in the unexpected. That doesn’t just mean some out-of-nowhere twist that catches audiences by surprise with little to no lead-up. His style is much more subtle, tweaking many of the different connecting elements in ways that always seem to come together in an incredibly satisfying way. It happened with the first Knives Out as audiences were led to suspect pretty much every single character at one point or another before seeing that perfect final shot. 2 years earlier, it happened with the incredible Star Wars: The Last Jedi as doubts surrounding lineage and legacy ultimately led up to one of the coolest lightsaber fights in the franchise’s history.
All that’s left to do is wait to see what Johnson and his team have in store for Knives Out 2. Here’s hoping it ends up, at the very least, reaching the heights of the first film. Odds are it won’t be called “Beaks Bloody” no matter how much sense that would make, so making it just a really great film would be an acceptable consolation prize.
Knives Out 2 still doesn’t have a title or release date, but it will stream on Netflix.
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Source: Empire
