Writer-director Rian Johnson’s Knives Out almost had a post-credits scene in the style of James Bond movies. Though the majority of Johnson’s movies are standalone efforts, he’s no stranger to franchise filmmaking, having helmed the eighth installment of Star Wars’ Skywalker saga, 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In fact, Knives Out is Johnson’s first movie after Star Wars, and in it he sets up a potential movie series of his own by introducing the great detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). In Knives Out, Blanc is hired to investigate the mysterious death of Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), the wealthy crime novelist patriarch of a family of New England WASPs.
Although the Knives Out ending wraps up the mystery of Harlan’s death, there’s room for Craig to return as Benoit Blanc investigating a different murder. It’s established in the movie that Blanc is a well-renowned detective, having been featured in The New Yorker, so there’s surely plenty of potential work for the gentleman sleuth. In fact, Johnson has even said he’d love to do a Knives Out sequel with Craig back as Benoit Blanc, but at this point it’s unknown whether such a film will come to fruition. Still, Johnson had plans for another movie even back before Knives Out released, as confirmed by the post-credits tag the filmmaker almost included in the movie.
At the very end of his in-theater commentary for Knives Out, Johnson reveals he’d considered putting something at the very end of the credits for fans who stuck around. The Knives Out post-credits tease would’ve been in the format of classic Bond movies that had “James Bond will return…” at the end of the film, which would’ve also been a funny nod to Craig’s other role as 007. Johnson explained the credits tag and why it was ultimately cut:
We had briefly thought of doing a cheeky little thing at the end of the credits where, just at the end of the crawl, we put “Benoit Blanc will return in…” and then the name of the next Benoit Blanc mystery. [Laughs] But we didn’t know if people would come to see the movie and we thought, well, why tempt fate. But hey maybe Benoit Blanc will return.
It certainly makes sense that Johnson wouldn’t want to risk including a Knives Out post-credits tag when he wasn’t sure how the movie would perform with critics or at the box office. After all, quite a few franchise movies have had post-credits scenes that will never be paid off because the films themselves did so poorly (one example from 2019 is the Hellboy reboot). However, not only were Knives Out movie reviews incredibly positive, but the film outperformed expectations in its opening weekend at the box office. So far (as of this writing), Knives Out has earned $185 million on a budget of $40 million, making it a resounding success.
As such, it wouldn’t be surprising if Johnson got the chance to make a Knives Out sequel with Craig back as Benoit Blanc to solve a new mystery. What may be surprising is that Johnson presumably already knew the name of the next Benoit Blanc mystery if the filmmaker had considered including it in the credits of Knives Out. Perhaps Johnson is further along in developing a Knives Out sequel than fans even know. Or perhaps he didn’t come up with a title since the post-credits tease was ultimately cut. Still, considering the reception to Knives Out, fans are no doubt be eager to see a sequel. Hopefully Johnson gets to make his Knives Out sequel (and many more Benoit Blanc mysteries).
