It’s been confirmed today that a sequel to the sensational murder mystery, Knives Out, is in the works over at its parent studio Lionsgate.
According to Deadline, studio chief Jon Feltheimer hinted that production will begin imminently and could see the birth of a new franchise.
I loved Knives Out. It was the best film I saw last year. But there should, in no way, shape or form, be a sequel to this film.
Originally written and directed by Rian Johnson – a cinematic auteur whose previous films include Brick and Looper – Knives Out functioned as a modern-day re-telling of an Agatha Christie novel.
We had a big mansion in an isolated location, an aristocratic family full of eccentrics (including Jamie Lee Curtis as a vaguely sociopathic Kris Jenner and Toni Collette as the flower child from Hell) and a whip-smart detective (Daniel Craig featuring a very distinctive Southern drawl) trying to solve a murder.
The film was big, bombastic and most of all smart – twisting the stereotypes and conventions of its parent genre in so many directions and with so many red herrings that the viewer didn’t know where to look, what to think or who to trust.
It’s also no coincidence that the film is Johnson’s first work since helming Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a massive blockbuster that broke $1billion worldwide, re-wrote the rules of the franchise but proved to be massively controversial among fans.
For Johnson, the film read as a palette cleanser to get him out of the franchise cinema headspace; a self-contained film with a rigid beginning and end, no inflated budgets or re-shoots or fanboy trolls on Twitter.
Which is why, for me, the news that a Knives Out sequel is in the works feels so weird – because the biggest and boldest move the film made was that it was an original piece of cinema that didn’t need to kickstart a franchise.
And I think a large part of what made the original so successful, actually, was its refusal to look and act like any other mainstream film you’d find in the cinema with an A-list cast attached.
In an era where every studio film you see is expected to lead into further films and complicated, interconnected universes, it was really refreshing to see a writer-director at the peak of his powers with a severely brilliant cast at his command sit back and say, ‘do you know what, that’s not what you really want’.
And do we, actually, want a sequel to Knives Out? Yes, it was great fun. Yes, Ana de Armas metamorphised into a leading lady in front of our very eyes. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis looked great in various primary coloured pantsuits…
But what, if anything, about the movie screamed ‘tentpole film franchise’ in the same way that Harry Potter or the MCU did?
What’s next for Craig’s Detective Blanc? Is he going to go up and down the country in a van solving murder mysteries? Will he have a new side-kick each time? Will he sport a different accent in every sequel? Will there be a spin-off featuring Chris Evans delivering monologues, wearing various different knitted jumpers? (Actually, I’ve changed my mind – make that film, as I’d watch the s**t out of it).
Knives Out 2 – if it does truly happen – would clearly follow the mould of its main inspiration, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, and see Blanc investigate a different murder at each turn.
But here’s where you actually have to stop and ask yourself the question – was Daniel Craig the best part of Knives Out? The answer to that, sorry, is a distinct no.
We have to start asking ourselves what we really want from our films. Many of us who loved Knives Out loved it because it was just great fun, no-strings-attached. If a sequel is released, I’d feel like I was being led into a relationship after just one date (which has happened – it didn’t end well).
That being said, however, maybe Knives Out: Knife Harder (official working title) will actually be brilliant and I’ll eat my words. Maybe it’ll make The Godfather II look like Cats. Or maybe it will be a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to extend the longevity of a great, nimble concept that has already run its course.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, just like any great whodunnit.
Knives Out is available to buy and stream digitally now.
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