Filmmaker Rian Johnson has made it no secret that his “Knives Out” films are heavily influenced by the works of author Agatha Christie, still the most successful novelist of all time with anywhere from 2-4 billion books sold.
Christie invented many cornerstones of the genre with her works, which were also quite varied in tone and genre despite being detective tales centering on a handful of sleuths.
Her iconic character of Hercule Poirot is the most obvious influence on Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc character. However, it goes beyond that as Johnson said, in an interview with Empire back in 2019, that the Peter Ustinov-led Poirot films like “Death on the Nile” and “Evil Under the Sun” were the biggest influences on the franchise:
“I was thinking about the Agatha Christie movies that had Peter Ustinov as Poirot when I was writing this. They were my tonal touchstones, with that sense of an all-star cast, a bunch of actors you love to see, having a blast.”
Johnson has also said before he wants each of the “Knives Out” films to be different takes on the whodunit, with each entry tackling a murder mystery subgenre. Asked by Slashfilm what types of stories he’d like to do if he could make as many of these films as he wants. Johnson says:
“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.
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.
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.”
The comments come as Johnson tells The Playlist that rather than tackling something different before jumping into the third Benoit Blanc feature, at the moment it’s looking like “Knives Out 3” will be his next feature:
“I thought that it would be healthy to do something else completely different first, but I’ll be honest with you, coming off of this, the thing that’s most creatively exciting to me right now is figuring out what this third movie can be. To me, it’s genuinely thrilling.
I start thinking about the other ideas I have in my drawer and I keep coming back to yeah, but what could the next mystery be? I don’t know. Right now I try to just kind of follow my nose in terms of what the next thing I do is.
Right now it’s leading me towards us jumping into the third one and figuring out how it can be totally different, both from ‘Knives Out’ and ‘Glass Onion.’ How it can show the audience what the wingspan of these can be and truly surprise them a third time. That’s a pretty fun challenge.”
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” is in theaters for one week starting tomorrow and on Netflix starting December 23rd.
