Knives Out star Jamie Lee Curtis explains why she was surprised by the film's success. The Halloween actor starred in Knives Out as Linda Drysdale, the eldest daughter of the 85-year-old best-selling crime novelist Harlan Thrombey who emerges as one of the many suspects when Harlan turns up dead and Benoit Blanc begins investigating. Since Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery finds Blanc relocating to Greece to solve an entirely new mystery, Linda and her fellow members of the Thrombey family won't be returning in the upcoming sequel.
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Daniel Craig led the star-studded Knives Out cast as the private detective alongside Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, and Christopher Plummer. Written and directed by Star Wars: The Last Jedi's Rian Johnson, Knives Out garnered rave reviews from critics for its subversive take on murder-mystery tropes and also earned Johnson an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The whodunit was also a massive success at the box office, grossing $311 million on a $40 million budget. As a result of all the unexpected success, Netflix paid $469 million for the rights to two sequels, the first due out later this year.
During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly about her most famous roles over the years, Curtis reflected on the success of Knives Out. Because the actress was "quite isolated" throughout production and didn't have much screen time, she had no idea how it would turn out and was pleasantly surprised when it became such a hit. Read what Curtis shared below:
I was actually quite isolated. I was living in this weird hotel by myself, and a lot of the movie, I'm not in. I was alone for a lot, and it was a very tough time. It turned out to be this fantastic movie. I would never have known that the movie we were making was the movie that we made. It wasn't evident to me, because Ryan was so specific in his methodology, and it's not like we're all watching monitors and seeing all the work. We had no idea. We'd just do our little thing and then go home. It was just such a delightful surprise.
Can Knives Out 2 Outdo The Original's Success?
During production, it's understandable that Curtis was unsure how Knives Out would turn out and therefore, was surprised by its success. However, in retrospect, the film's success is hardly an enigma, but rather a consistent career trend for the writer/director. Johnson made his directorial debut with Brick in 2005, which was met with similarly positive reviews and box office success for a low-budget mystery movie. Johnson transitioned to higher-profile films with Looper and The Last Jedi, and Knives Out signaled a return to his neo-noir roots, though the results were similar to his past projects.
Johnson has a nearly spotless track record, which is why expectations are sky-high for his follow-up. Knives Out 2 early reactions have already indicated the sequel might be better than the original. This is sure to raise expectations exponentially, so it should be interesting to see how audiences respond to the Knives Out sequel when it premieres on December 23. Although this time around, the whodunit's success won't be measured by box office totals, but by Netflix streaming numbers.
Source: EW