Glass Onion: Rian Johnson Addresses Potential Knives Out Prequel for Benoit Blanc

As proven by the praise earned by Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, there seems to be limitless potential for the future of Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, but one thing audiences shouldn’t expect is to see a prequel to the film franchise, at least if writer/director Rian Johnson has anything to say about it. From his perspective, despite Blanc being a compelling character, his role is always meant to be in service to the overall mystery as opposed to being the focal point, so he’ll only ever showcase relevant information about the character rather than his origins as a detective. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is set to land on Netflix on December 23rd.

“This is something that I was very relieved that Daniel and I are on the same page with,” Johnson recalled to Uproxx of the character’s history. “I think little tiny glimpses into that is fun for me. And it’s a trap that I find myself as a writer having to really push back against, just for myself. Having Daniel Craig in that part, the temptation is to think that Blanc as a character is what’s interesting about these movies.”

He added, “He’s interesting in his function within the mystery, you know what I mean? … I don’t know, the notion of building out a backstory, learning where he came from, all of that stuff, to me, I don’t know, I have a natural inclination to kind of push that stuff back and to say a little goes a long way in terms of that. And ultimately this has to be the story of the mystery. The mystery’s the thing. And the detective is interesting in the way he solves his function within solving the mystery. And if we get glimpses beyond that, that’s great. But I feel like a little of that goes a very long way for me.”

Even if we might not be getting a prequel focusing on Blanc, a third film in the series is confirmed to be in development. When we’ll actually get that film, however, is an entirely different mystery.

“The first one, [Johnson] had the idea for years in his head, but he only put pen to paper like late January and by end of October we were filming it, which is a super fast,” producer Ram Bergman shared with ComicBook.com. “This movie, he really did not have an idea. He just stopped thinking and we were … From the moment he started really writing it, like, nine months later, a year later, we were filming. So, the good thing, he is very motivated to go do the next one as quickly as possible. But, you know, we’ll see how fast he is but this is gonna be a challenge. It’s gonna be a bigger challenge. So we’ll see how long it’s gonna take.”

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is set to land on Netflix on December 23rd.

Would you want to see a Benoit Blanc prequel? Let us know in the comments!