Even as Daniel Craig has said his final goodbye to the iconic action hero character of James Bond, the actor has already found a new action-mystery franchise to helm with another dynamic authority figure. Craig shone as master detective Benoit Blanc in filmmaker Rian Johnson’s 2019 mystery-thriller caper Knives Out. The sequel to the film featuring the return of Craig as Blanc recently wrapped its shoot. In an interview with Empire, the actor opined that Knives Out 2 will be even better than the original Knives Out.
“I’m so lucky to have Rian in my life. He’s such a great writer. That script arrived and I was literally like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I couldn’t believe that he wanted me to play it. I was going, ‘It says Southern accent you went here. Really?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah?’ We’ve just finished the second one, literally weeks ago. They’ve just wrapped up in Serbia. Dare I say it’s better? We’ll see. I don’t want to tempt fate. It’s different, and that’s the amazing thing. It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, but it’s very different. I’m very excited about it.”
The original Knives Out was a throwback to old-fashioned murder-mystery films fashioned along the lines of Agatha Christie novels. Much like classic idiosyncratic detectives like Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, Benoit Blanc was depicted as “The Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths.” A deceptively sharp-eyed observer of human nature with a heavy southern drawl and an eccentric approach to solving criminal cases.
While Daniel Craig was hailed by critics for his performance as Blanc, what made Knives Out such a fun ride was the surrounding cast of singular characters portrayed by A-list actors at the top of their game, from Chris Evans’ delightfully devilish take on Hugh Ransom Drysdale to Ana de Armas’ breakout role as nurse Marta Cabrera.
Following the success of Knives Out, Rian Johnson confirmed his plans to make an entire series of movies based on Benoit Blanc’s case files. The upcoming Knives Out 2 has gathered an impressive cast list that includes Craig, Dave Bautista, Edward Norton, Janelle Mon&áe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Madelyn Cline, Jessica Henwick, and Ethan Hawke.
While Craig appears confident that the sequel will be at least as good as the original Knives Out, he is not the only member of the cast to have good things to say about the upcoming film. In the past, Dave Bautista has also intimated that as good as Knives Out was, the sequel does one better with a more interesting cast of characters.
“I really think it’s going to be as good, if not better, than the first one. I’m always afraid to say that because I don’t want anybody to get offended saying that we’re going to be better, but I really do think this. I think the characters are just so much more colorful. I think people are really going to dig this. The characters are just so great. They’re so different. Everybody’s cast so well.”
Seeing the confidence of the cast in their film, it seems fans of the Knives Out series are in for a treat when the sequel finally releases. Knives Out 2 is set for release in 2022. This news comes from Empire.