Glass Onion Director Says Knives Out 3 Will Be “Very, Very Different” for the Franchise

With Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, writer/director Rian Johnson explored a number of new characters and storytelling elements that set it apart from the original Knives Out, though the two films have a lot in common, namely both being murder mysteries and putting Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in the center of it. Johnson is already excited about bringing a third film to life, but he recently teased that the upcoming entry will be “very, very different” from what came before it, which is sure to spark speculation about whether the new film will shift its overall structure and tone or if it will have drastically different characters and locales. Knives Out 3 doesn’t currently have a release date.

“I’m making the next [Benoit Blanc movie] next because it’s the most exciting thing right now to me. That’s served me really well,” Johnson detailed to Empire Magazine. “I feel like any movie I’m making, I need to be making it because I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’m jumping into the next Benoit Blanc next because I can’t think about another story.” 

Despite his excitement for the third film, Johnson confessed he doesn’t quite have it all laid out just yet.

“I’ve got a big cloud of ideas, but it hasn’t all snapped into focus yet,” the filmmaker confirmed. “It’s exciting, though, and it’s very, very different from this one. That’s what I’m excited about.”

Johnson went on to detail his development process, in which he confirmed that the crimes being committed in the film aren’t nearly as important as the characters and the stories themselves, ultimately leading him to fill in the blanks of the inciting incidents.

“I start structurally,” Johnson explained. “I start working in notebooks. I don’t start with a crime, I start with the structure of the story, and what the audience’s journey is actually going to be through the story. Which has to do with the crime, but more than that, it has to do with who we care about and why.” 

He added, “That’s great, as opposed to, ‘Let’s come up with a great murder,’ where you’ll drive yourself insane trying to do it.”

Stay tuned for details on Knives Out 3. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix.

Are you looking forward to Knives Out 3? Let us know in the comments!