While I can't imagine that any of us were doubting that Rian Johnson's Knives Out would receive a sequel, I think we were all pretty shocked when it was revealed that Netflix had driven a dump truck full of money to Johnson's front door for not one, but two sequels to Knives Out.
Rian Johnson will be writing and directing the two Knives Out sequels, and will also be producing with his partner Ram Bergman. Daniel Craig will reprise his role of Detective Benoit Blanc, and I'm sure Johnson will be assembling another all-star cast for the next mystery. To that end, Deadline has reported that Dave Bautista (Army of the Dead) has become the first new addition to the Knives Out sequel as he's slated to join Craig in the upcoming film. Plot details are being kept under wraps and it's not known just who Bautista will be playing, but production on the sequel is slated to kick off this summer in Greece.
Although the Knives Out sequel will obviously find Detective Benoit Blanc tackling another mystery, Rian Johnson has previously teased that we shouldn't expect more of the same for the sequel. "The same way Agatha Christie wrote a bunch of Poirot novels," Rian Johnson said, "we can do that with Blanc and keep making new mysteries, you know, whole new cast, whole new location, whole new mystery, it's just another Beniot Blanc mystery. There's so many different things you could do with it." Johnson continued: "You look at Agatha Christie's books for example, it's not like every single one is a mansion, and a family, and a library, and a detective. Besides settings, she also explored a bunch of different sub-genres, And Then They Were None is essentially a slasher film, it's basically a horror movie; The ABC Murders is kind of like a proto-serial killer movie in a way. She found a very different narrative way into each of them." Dave Bautista will next be seen in Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead, which is set to hit Netflix on May 21st.