Rian Johnson sees long future for Knives Out franchise
Filmmaker Rian Johnson has suggested that he and Daniel Craig could collaborate on lots more Knives Out movies over the coming years.
Rian Johnson plans to keep making Knives Out movies for years to come.
The 51-year-old director has helmed the third film in the mystery franchise in the form of the upcoming Wake Up Dead Man and thinks there is plenty of scope for more stories featuring Daniel Craig's sleuth Benoit Blanc.
Rian told Empire magazine: "I'm not sick of making these movies. I feel invigorated, if anything.
"I would be happy if Daniel and I kept doing other work, then coming back and making one of these every once in a while, for the rest of our lives. I'd be thrilled with that."
Johnson set out to write an "impossible crime" in the new movie but admits that it made the script incredibly complex to write.
The Star Wars: The Last Jedi filmmaker said: "The impossible crime is, that it's impossible for anyone to have done the crime in the way that it's presented when the body is found. So how was it done?"
Rian added: "This was definitely the hardest script I've ever written.
"It's a bit of all happening at once, and it is really, really, really hard. Really hard. And it's getting harder!"
Elsewhere, Craig admitted that he didn't want to know who the murderer was when reading the script as he tries to see the story through the eyes of his character.
The former James Bond star said: "I read them, I suppose, like Benoit.
"I'm trying to get in Benoit's head. I don't read it wanting to know who the murderer is; I want to know what the whole is."
Wake Up Dead Man – which also stars Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close and Josh Brolin – has religious themes at the centre of the plot and Johnson wanted to take a respectful approach as he "grew up very Christian".
The director said: "I grew up very Christian – not just raised going to church, but with a belief in God, and a relationship with Christ being incredibly central to the way I framed everything in the world around me. And I'm not anymore.
"I have lots of people in my life that I love that still are (religious), and there are things about that time that I still really treasure. I have a lot of complicated feelings about it."
Johnson added: "That's the real reason the script was so hard to write.
"It's something I do take really seriously. I wanted to explore it in a really honest way, while also not being facile about it, or – God forbid – moralistic or irreverent."
Rian had previously suggested that Wake Up Dead Man would be a "personal journey" for Craig's detective.
The filmmaker said: "He has the biggest personal journey in this one. Benoit has to engage with (the mystery) in a different way.
"He's in a very different place than in the previous two films. Daniel and I had a lot of fun thinking about where Blanc is at in his life. And I think he's going through some s***."
