KNIVES OUT
After a billion-dollar Star Wars movie, the filmmaker explains his unpredictable next move: an original, sardonic murder mystery entitled
Rian Johnson tells Empire about his all-star whodunnit. Our money’s on Michael Shannon being the killer. In every film he’s ever made.
WHEN IT COMES to the title of Rian Johnson’s new movie, it’s tempting to play detective. Knives Out, eh? Surely that’s got to be inspired by the director’s experiences on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where he was besieged by whingeing fanbabies, furious at the perceived destruction of their childhoods, right? It must, therefore, be a reference to the fact that they had their knives out for him from the moment the movie was released (and, in some cases, before), yes? Well, no. “I’ve had that title for a long while,” says Johnson. “Years and years ago. I just love that title.”
Sometimes, we should leave detecting to the detectives. Knives Out, then, is not a reaction to Johnson’s time (which might be an ongoing thing, with his non-skywalker Saga trilogy still a possibility) on a major franchise (“Not at all. I had the time of my life making The Last Jedi”). Instead, it’s an example of a director using newfound clout from a billion-dollar grossing behemoth to get a smaller movie off the ground. The type of movie that Hollywood doesn’t tend to make these days. One that’s been buzzing around Johnson’s head for a while.
“I’ve had this idea for about a decade,” he tells Empire. “It started with wanting to do a whodunnit. The whodunnit mystery is something that I have loved since I was a kid, reading Agatha Christie mysteries. Then, after The Last Jedi, I was able to sit down and write it fairly quickly. It all happened very fast. I started writing it in January of last year, and we had wrapped the film by Christmas.”
Knives Out, then, as the posters proclaim, is “a Rian Johnson whodunnit”. In the same way that his debut, Brick, was a Rian Johnson film noir, The Brothers Bloom was a Rian Johnson con-artist flick, and Looper was a Rian Johnson time-travel movie. In other words, a characterbased, knowing twist on the usual ingredients. “A whodunnit is distinct from other types of detective fiction,” he explains. “It’s a cast of characters. There’s a person at the centre of it that everyone wants something from. They’re
bumped off and there’s some detective who comes in and solves the case. That, to me, is a whodunnit.”
Johnson’s whodunnit revolves around the murder of Christopher Plummer’s elderly patriarch, which brings with it no lack of suspects in his own rapacious, grasping family, and the attentions of the mysterious Benoit Blanc, Johnson’s very own answer to the great detectives he grew up reading, and watching. “Coming into it, being such a big fan of Poirot, it was hard to know even where to begin in terms of creating a new detective that’s going to hold a candle to that,” he admits. “Benoit Blanc has some of the elements of Poirot, in that he’s a bit self-inflated, but there’s a warmth to him which shines through with Daniel.”
Daniel, of course, being Daniel Craig, Johnson’s first choice for the role, who took advantage of the bump in Bond 25 production to sign on, excited by the possibilities of a Blanc page. And around him, Johnson has assembled something that, for him, is one of the signatures of a big-screen whodunnit. “I was thinking about the Agatha Christie movies that had Peter Ustinov as Poirot when I was writing this,” he says. “They were my tonal touchstones, with that sense of an allstar cast, a bunch of actors you love to see, having a blast.”
Accordingly, Johnson’s suspects, most of whom are related to Plummer’s Harlan Thrombrey, include Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon (a red herring if ever there was one), Ana de Armas, Toni Collette, Don Johnson and, cussing his way through the film’s trailer with an air of barely concealed prickish delight that would give Captain America a hernia, Chris Evans. Throw in Lakeith Stanfield as Blanc’s partner, Detective Elliot, and that’s one heck of a cast. “I wanted to give the kids a chance,” he laughs. “People you don’t usually see. It’s wonderful to have a big cast of movie stars, but specifically it’s wonderful in this movie because that’s part of the pleasure we’re going for.” So, that’s the mighthavedunnits taken care of. As for the howdunnit, whydunnit, whendunnit, wheredunnit, whatdunnit and whodunnit? All in good time. knives out is out on 29 november