Rian Johnson Says Knives Out Sequel Won’t Pull a “Young Indiana Jones”

While fans might be interested to see what makes Benoit Blanc tick, Knives Out director Rian Johnson says that the planned sequel featuring Daniel Craig’s southern detective will not delve too much into his backstory. Unlike the Young Indiana Jones TV series, which demystified Harrison Ford’s charming archaeologist by filling in all the gaps between his childhood as seen at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and his adulthood seen in the rest of the franchise, the Knives Out follow-up will take place in the same universe, but will be just another case in the detective’s docket.

Johnson has made it clear from the beginning that the film was inspired by Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries, especially those starring Hercule Poirot. That will continue to be his North Star as he develops this (and any possible future) films, he teased.

“This’ll be another Poirot novel. This’ll be just like what Agatha Christie did,” Johnson told Vulture. “It’s disconnected from Knives Out. It’s just another case.”

In Knives Out, Craig played Blanc — a private detective who finds himself digging into the death of a wealthy mystery novelist. While the death appeared to be a suicide at first glance, Blanc was able to see past all the circumstantial evidence and family half-truths to see that the dysfunctional family of the writer all had motive and opportunity. Just like Poirot — or similar characters like Gregory MacDonald’s Francis Xavier Flynn — Blanc is apparently a character who wanders from whodunit to whodunit, providing Johnson the opportunity to explore how he bounces off different situations and how Craig plays off of new and different costars every time. And given the Oscar nominations and critical and financial success of Knives Out, you can probably expect the next mystery will be just as star-studded as the last.

“In my mind, I don’t even think of it in terms of like a sequel,” Johnson said previously. “Ever since we started working on this I was like, look, if we can keep this going, the same way Agatha Christie wrote a bunch of Poirot novels. I mean, do that with Blanc and keep making more mysteries. Whole new cast, whole new location, whole new mystery. It’s just another Benoit Blanc mystery and it seems like there’s just so many different things you can do with it, you know? It seems like it’d be really fun.”

Knives Out is now available to own on Digital HD and will be released on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K on February 25th.