Rian Johnson Wants to Keep Making ‘Knives Out’ With Daniel Craig

Director Rian Johnson is open to continuing the Knives Out series — “as long as Daniel [Craig] still wants to keep doing it.”

The 51-year-old filmmaker has helmed the whodunnit franchise that follows Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc since its debut in 2019, and Johnson has revealed he is happy to continue the franchise past the upcoming Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery so long as both the former James Bond star is happy to keep making them and he can find stories that are “genuinely exciting and scary.”

When Collider asked the director whether there would be more Knives Out movies, he said: “As long as Daniel still wants to keep doing it and as long as we have an idea that, to us, feels not just like cranking another one out, but feels genuinely exciting and scary like, ‘Oh, wow, could we pull that off?’”

“I love the genre. It’s endlessly malleable, and so it holds endless possibilities. But at the same time, I have made three of them in a row. I don’t feel burnt out on it at all, but the next thing I have in my head to write is an original that’s not a mystery at all.”

The Star Wars: The Last Jedi director added that the mystery genre was “totally different” to others as it “encompasses so many other types of genres.”

He said: “It’s a totally different genre. One of the things I love about the mystery genre is that it holds the whodunit. Like sci-fi, it encompasses so many other types of genres.”

Looking to the next Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, Johnson teased the upcoming whodunnit would be “so different” from its 2022 predecessor, Glass Onion.

He said: “Wake Up Dead Man, this next movie, is so different from Glass Onion. It’s like night and day. And so, as long as we keep doing that, it’s exciting.”

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which stars Craig, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Cailee Spaeny, Glenn Close and Andrew Scott, will follow Benoit Blanc as he tries to solve his most dangerous case yet.