Agatha Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard deals with the modern day screen adaptations of his relative’s works – serving as CEO and chairman of her estate. Christie of course is the best-selling author of all time, having penned 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections with more than two billion copies of her work having been sold.
Filmmaker Kenneth Branagh is a fan and has both directed and starred in three films based on her Hercule Poirot works thus far – the latest being “A Haunting in Venice” which hit cinemas today.
The new film marks a change as it avoids the more well-known Poirot novels and adapts the little-known “Hallowe’en Party”. The results have been a success with the film scoring by far the best praise of the three.
With nearly three dozen Hercule Poirot tales to choose from, there’s multiple directions Branagh could go next and there’s no real order to the books beyond the first (“The Mysterious Affair at Styles”) and the last (“Curtain”).
Prichard, speaking with Inverse, produces the films and was asked how many more Branagh Poirot movies there could be to which he says:
I would love to make more of these movies. I enjoy the process. I think a Hollywood movie brings you to an audience that you can’t get any other way. There’s a scale to them and a beauty to them, which is second to none.
So if this movie is successful and Ken wants to make more and 20th Century wants to make more, I would be very surprised if we didn’t. There are plenty more stories. My great-grandmother wrote 33 full-length Poirot novels. There’s plenty of material to choose from.
We go one movie at a time. Let’s hope this one is a success and then someone wants to make another one. And if that one’s a success, maybe we’ll make another one after that. But there will be a limit at some point. Ken has other things he wants to do. There is a finite amount of time in the world.”
He also says he hopes Christie’s other famed detective, Miss Jane Marple, gets to have her time on the big screen:
“I would love to do something with Miss Marple. I think she deserves her moment in the sun. She’s always slightly sat in Poirot’s shadow and it would be nice to bring her out at some point.”
The BBC and Britbox recently filmed an adaptation of Christie’s “Murder is Easy” due out next year. “A Haunting in Venice” is currently in cinemas.
