Rian Johnson Teases ‘Gothic’ Third ‘Knives Out’ film

The next movie in the Knives Out series, Wake Up Dead Man, is “much more Gothic and grounded in tone.”

The whodunnit franchise’s creator, Rian Johnson, has revealed the third film will revert “back to the origins of the genre” and is more like that first movie, 2019’s Knives Out, than 2022’s Glass Onion.

He told Rolling Stone: “It’s incredibly different from Glass Onion.

“We put out a teaser trailer a month ago. It’s much more a Gothic, much more grounded tone. It’s more similar to the first one in that way. It kind of gets back to the real origins of the genre, which, predating [Agatha] Christie, go back to [Edgar Allan] Poe.”

The Star Wars: The Last Jedi director insists he never wants to “repeat myself.”

He explained: “If I feel like I’m repeating the same thing, or turning the crank on the handle and turning out more of what I did last time, I’m not good enough to hide that from the audience.

“So what I end up chasing is the experience of each of these things. It’s not necessarily where I’m going to flip and do a totally different tone, but after three years of working on something that has a particular tone, it’s like you’ve been eating the same thing for lunch every day for three years. I’m more excited about doing something that feels new. That’s similar with the show. It’s not so much a conscious decision. In order to keep it exciting for myself, I don’t want to repeat myself.”

Johnson would love to continue the franchise for as long as possible.

Asked if more films starring Daniel Craig as private investigator Benoit Blanc are in the cards, he replied: “I feel great! Because I have genuinely taken a swing each time that I didn’t think would work.

“Ultimately, that’s the thing you’re trying to avoid. The second you feel like you know how to do this, that leads nowhere good. So I feel fantastic. And with the movies, we can keep doing that. I don’t have something in my head right now. You kind of burn the ship into the sea each time and ask yourself, ‘How will I make anything ever again?’ But I would keep doing them as long as I can.”

In the meantime, Wake Up Dead Man is due to hit theaters in December.