Benoit Blanc will return in a sequel to Knives Out

Despite hav­ing been done dirty in a gen­er­al sense by the lat­est install­ment in the Star Wars fran­chise, Rian John­son rep­re­sents one of the major suc­cess sto­ries of Hol­ly­wood in 2019.

His lat­est fea­ture Knives Out attained that rare com­bi­na­tion of box-office suprema­cy (the $40 mil­lion pro­duc­tion has racked up $250 mil­lion in world­wide gross­es) and crit­i­cal adu­la­tion, even net­ting three Gold­en Globe nom­i­na­tions for the film and its stars Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas.

Though they got shut out at last night’s cer­e­mo­ny, at least Craig has some­thing to smile about this morn­ing: The Hol­ly­wood Reporter ran an item last night announc­ing that Craig would reprise his role of sleuth extra­or­di­naire Benoit Blanc in a sequel to Knives Out, as the unof­fi­cial leader of CSI: KFC endeav­ors to crack a new case. At a time when pre-exist­ing IP reigns as king, there’s some­thing heart­en­ing about see­ing an orig­i­nal-con­cept project suc­ceed on those same terms.

Bet­ter still, this upcom­ing project will have the secret weapon that made this past fall’s film sing in return­ing writer-direc­tor John­son. The THR item quotes him as want­i­ng to strike while the iron is hot, with plans to com­plete an already-in-progress screen­play in time to shoot quick­ly over the com­ing year.

It’s a curi­ous devel­op­ment, con­sid­er­ing that last we checked, John­son was still on the hook to pos­si­bly helm a future Star Wars tril­o­gy. The shall-we-say con­tentious release of The Rise of Sky­walk­er may have com­pli­cat­ed those plans, how­ev­er; I can­not pro­fess to know the inside con­tours of show busi­ness, but if I was Rian John­son, I would not want to make a Star Wars movie right now.

All the bet­ter for what we can only assume will be titled Knives Out 2: Knives In. It came as a palate-cleanser for the cin­e­mat­ic cal­en­dar, a refresh­ing­ly light yet sub­stan­tive sto­ry wed­ding raw enter­tain­ment val­ue with thought­ful com­men­tary – the kind of thing that the dream fac­to­ry should be giv­ing us with far more frequency.

A sec­ond serv­ing would be the uncom­mon type of fran­chis­ing that feels gen­uine­ly moti­vat­ed by the people’s demand for more, rather than a studio’s hope to grab anoth­er fist­ful of cash. Maybe the next one could be set on a train?