Netflix paid big bucks for two Knives Out sequels. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery debuted last year, but the WGA strike obviously forced writer/director Rian Johnson to pump the brakes on the next installment. However, now that the strike is over, Johnson is back to work on Knives Out 3 and told The Wrap that he’s got the premise nailed down.
“It’s coming along. I obviously couldn’t work during the strike, and now that it’s over, I’m diving in full force, and so it’s coming along,” Rian Johnson said. “I’ve got the premise, I’ve got the setting, I’ve got what the movie is in my head. It’s just a matter of writing the damn thing.“
At the beginning of the year, Johnson was still busy juggling a “big cloud of ideas” for Knives Out 3 but hadn’t settled on anything. “I’m jumping into the next Benoit Blanc next because I can’t think about another story,” Johnson said. “I’ve got a big cloud of ideas, but it hasn’t all snapped into focus yet. It’s exciting, though, and it’s very, very different from this one. That’s what I’m excited about.” The director said that when he’s breaking the story, he doesn’t start with the crime. “I start with the structure of the story, and what the audience’s journey is actually going to be through the story,” Johnson explained. “Which has to do with the crime, but more than that, it has to do with who we care about and why… That’s great, as opposed to, ‘Let’s come up with a great murder’, where you’ll drive yourself insane trying to do it.“
Although Johnson’s contract with Netflix only covers two Knives Out sequels, he teased last November that he’d be down to do more as long as Daniel Craig and himself are still having fun. “As long as the two of us are still having fun, and as long as we can continue to make these truly new experiences each time, and find new ways to challenge ourselves,” Johnson said. “The second we feel like we’re repeating ourselves, or just turning a crank on a machine, we’ll stop. Because to me, the whole conception of this whole series is the same way Agatha Christie did it with her books – we’re doing something new and surprising every time.“
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