Rian Johnson has no plans to make a Knives Out prequel.
The 51-year-old director has helmed the whodunnit series since 2019, and with the third entry Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery just around the corner, Johnson has insisted he is not interested in fleshing out Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc with his own origins movie.
When Deadline asked the Star Wars: The Last Jedi director about a potential Knives Out prequel, Johnson said: “I don’t know. For me, I feel Benoit Blanc, he’s the detective, and his job in these things is to solve the crime.”
“And I kinda don’t wanna step outside that to a flashback or anything explaining why he became a detective or something. I feel like, what’s interesting is seeing how he engages … But we do learn quite a bit about him through seeing his process and through seeing his relationship with the main people. And in this one, I think you get a real glimpse into a certain part of his soul.”
Johnson’s producing partner Ram Bergman echoed the filmmaker’s sentiments, and said “there’s no big picture” when it comes to the Knives Out series.
He explained: “We don’t really look at it as a franchise, we’re looking at it as each movie on its own. And it doesn’t feel any different than working on any other movie with Rian.”
“The idea is feeling like, before every movie, does the movie feel dangerous? Does this movie feel like a risk? Because if it’s not, what’s the point of doing it? And again, I don’t think we’re looking at it as a franchise. We’re looking at it as, how can we make something different than the first two, and how can we make it something really good and special? That’s it.”
“There’s no big picture of franchises. The business people might think that, but we’re not looking at it that way.”
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Even so, Johnson said Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery was a “very personal” movie for him due to its religious themes.
He said: “With this one, I knew I wanted to kind of ground it a little bit more, and for me, I thought making it about something that’s very personal for me would be a way to do that.”
“I was also curious to see if we could make one of these films that’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery — so, it’s a big, fun, entertaining thing that hopefully lots of people will come see and have a good time – but also, in real nuanced and generous way, hopefully, talks about faith in America today. So, that was a big challenge.”
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