What Will the Plot of Knives Out 2 and 3 Be?

 

“I suspect foul play, and I have eliminated no suspects”, states Benoit Blanc in the whodunit mystery Knives Out. Written and directed by Rian Johnson the film starred Daniel Craig as the eccentric Southern private detective that investigated the death of a patriarch of an eccentric, combative family and was a crackling success with audiences and critics alike. The film developed by Rian Johnson based on his love of the mystery genre and as a homage to the Agatha Christie whodunits of yesteryear but set in present-day America was what drove Knives Out to become what it did with its all-star cast ensemble keeping the audience on pins and needles. 

 

 

The complicated and layered murder mystery almost didn’t land its leading man though as Daniel Craig who was always a prime candidate for the role in Rian Johnson’s mind almost missed out on playing Benoit Blanc as he was set to begin filming No Time To Die, starring as James Bond himself. However, the attached director at the time Danny Boyle departed from the project due to creative differences thus opening a window for Craig as described by Johnson: 

"Then it was a very serendipitous moment when the Bond movie pushed three months. This was not like the injury he had; this was before that. It was just a logistic thing, they pushed their schedule, so he suddenly had a window open and we got in there right away and he said yes right away, and we were making the movie right away."

 

 

 

Daniel Craig was masterful as Benoit Blanc, completely transforming away from his role as Bond. The detective has an off-kilter unassuming quality to him that causes his suspects to second-guess him and question his competency but all the time the wheels are spinning in his head as he puts the pieces of the puzzles together. Blanc’s quirky and charming sidekick/suspect in the film Marta played by Anna De Armas has amazing chemistry with Craig which in turn translates to her time on No Time To Die, in which director Cary Funkaga approached her about playing the next Bond girl which was met by the instantaneous seal of approval by Craig having just finished working with De Armas on filming Knives Out the month before. As detailed in an interview with De Armas from the Hollywood Reporter:

I know you had met Bond producer Barbara Broccoli five years earlier, but do you know if Daniel recommended you to her and director Cary Fukunaga after you worked so well together on Knives Out?

 

“I think it was Cary’s idea. Some of the film takes place in Cuba, and Cary called me to say that this character doesn’t exist yet in the script but he kept thinking about me and would write it for me. When he brought up the idea to Barbara and Daniel, Daniel was completely on board and supportive of it, which made me very happy. We had literally wrapped Knives Out a month before that. When we were shooting Knives Out, he was already training and preparing for Bond, which wasn’t a part of my life yet. So, it happened to be a very happy coincidence.” 

In my mind, De Armas was just as much the star of Knives Out as was Craig so it would be great to see her featured in future Knives Out sequels with Marta being to Blanc the Watson to his Holmes. And sequels are definitely on the way as in early 2020 news broke that development on Knives Out 2 featuring the return of Johnson and Craig together had commenced and as reported by THR earlier this spring, Johnson and Craig have partnered with Netflix to deliver two Knives Out sequels with Netflix securing the rights to the films in a deal worth $469 million with Craig and Johnson standing to walk away with over $100 million at the end of the day. And in fact, filming is already well underway on Knives Out 2 with filming just having wrapped in Greece. 

 

The first Knives Out film featured a star-studded cast with in addition to Craig and De Armas the likes of Christoper Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Micheal Shannon, Chris Evans, and moreso. Johnson aims to carry on that tradition with Knives Out 2 having already cast a slew of A-list talent in the sequel featuring: Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Jessica Henwick, and “Outer Banks” breakout Madelyn Cline. Not officially announced yet but captured in set photos reveals the presence of Ethan Hawke and Will Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith in the film. Johnson’s plans for the sequels are grand in its scope of storytelling with a strong focus on character as the director iterates: 

“I’ll tell you, the truth is I had such a great time working with Daniel Craig and I had so much fun doing this on every level, from writing it to making it,” Johnson said in September 2019 shortly after the film’s TIFF world premiere. “I’ve never really been interested in doing sequels, but this, the idea of doing more of these with Daniel as his character, is not sequels. It’s just what Agatha Christie did. It’s just coming up with a whole new mystery, a whole new location, all new cast, whole new mechanics of the appeal of a mystery and everything. It’d be a blast.”

 

 

Johnson told SiriusXM in February 2020 that he did not even approach writing “Knives Out 2” as if it was a sequel. “There’s so many different things you can do with it. And that’s what’s fun about it. You look at Agatha Christie’s books and it’s not like every single one is a mansion, a library, and a detective. Besides setting, she also explored a bunch of different subgenres. She found a different narrative way into each of them.”

The legendary casting and ambition to tell new inventive stories in the mystery space gives the Knives Out sequels plenty of potential to be fun, witty and eccentric murder mystery whodunits led by Daniel Craig as the Southern-drawled Benoit Blanc and hopefully his charismatic and offbeat sidekick Marta played by Anna De Armas. Knives Out 2 has a tentative release date of sometime in 2022 on Netflix to be followed by Knives Out 3 assumedly sometime in 2023. And as we await the further untangling of this twisted web, let us remember Blanc’s words to Marta in the film as he remarks to her, “The game is afoot, eh Watson?”