Landslide: A Knives Out Mystery
I cast and write my own "Knives Out" movie. This is a fun one.
The thing about Knives Out is that it’s a perfect idea. A murder-mystery saga centered on Daniel Craig hamming it up around a cavalcade of actors we know and love? Yes, please.
I’m often hesitant when it comes to sequels and cinematic continuations of the same story. But this series is great as they’re fully-formed and isolated movies that work by themselves and have fun while taking the piss out of modern-day culture.
Although a step down from the first, Glass Onion is an entertaining and ingenious follow-up that features Benoit Blanc at his best, Janelle Monae throwing fastball after fastball and Edward Norton doing his best impression of El*n M*sk.
I’m all for actors going for it, and the murder-mystery story is perfect for archetypes. Which is why …. I’ve built the third Knives Out movie. And I have to say, this may be my magnum opus.
I can’t take all the credit for the location of “ski lodge” as the setup for the third movie, but once I saw this tweet my mind started racing. Knives Out was a fall movie. Glass Onion was a summer movie. Now let’s hit the slopes in the third for our wintry tale.
Obviously, Craig’s Benoit Blanc is back and after his stressful ordeal at the Glass Onion, he and his significant other played by [cut out for spoilers] decide to take a little ski vacation at Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia, Canada.
To be honest with you, I’ve never gone skiing before, and I just googled “best skiing in Canada” and this popped up, and so that’s what we’re going with. That’s cinema, baby.
Like the first two films, the title needs to be based on a song—The Beatles’ “Glass Onion” and Radiohead’s “Knives Out”—and so for this one I went with Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” It’s a classic and perhaps Fleetwood Mac’s topsy-turvy history is the right tone-setter for the story to come.
Anyway, let’s get to the new cast starting with the legend of all legends.
Colin Farrell as Detective Connor O’Connor
I’ve written in this here newsletter before about my love for Farrell, so there was no question that he would be in this movie that I’m putting together. A rival detective, O’Connor is everything Blanc is not: greasy, callow and prone to anger. But like Blanc, he’s a damn good detective. He also shows up at the ski lodge at the film’s start, which immediately puts Blanc on guard as he begins to snoop around.
Taylor Russell & Rachel Zegler as Isabella & Arielle Santos
At 28 and 21 respectively, Russell and Zegler are two of the brightest young stars in Hollywood. Russell is captivating in Waves and Bones and All as the innocent and precocious lead, but I want to see her play a late-20s wealthy snob, along with her sister played by Zegler. Zegler is fantastic as Maria in the newest West Side Story, and she deserves to be in more adult fare, as she has Snow White and a character from Shazam upcoming. I want to see her as a mischievous 20-something. The two go by themselves to ski and immediately start to cause chaos, catching a cheating couple played by…
Oscar Isaac & Renate Reinsve as Liam & Renate Albrecht
This is my movie, so I can do whatever I want AND what I want is for Oscar Isaac and Renate Reinsve to play a couple that hates each other. Snippy and constantly furious, the two can both play an upset pair with aplomb. We’ve seen Isaac as an asshole tech bro in Ex Machina and a self-pitying jerk in Inside Llewyn Davis. Merge those characters together and we have Liam. Renate Reinsve—the star of the best movie this year in The Worst Person in the World—deserves a big stage to go toe-for-toe with Isaac and she’ll get it here. The twist here is that not just one of the pair is cheating, they both are. And who are they cheating with? The same person played by…
Zoe Kravitz as Chef Angela Ellis
The chef at the local eatery, Ellis is behind the affairs of both Liam and Renate Albrecht. No one can play sensual, shrewd and elegant quite like Kravitz as we’ve seen in The Batman or Kimi (both from this year) and she’ll be one of the main suspects in this one after someone or someones perish. After such a stellar year, Kravitz deserves to be in every movie and since I’m casting, she’s a shoo-in for this one.
Dev Patel as Mason Harper
Dev Patel is a world-class actor. He can play genteel, foolish and impish. From The Green Knight to Slumdog Millionaire, Patel has become one of the more underrated actors and has a bag of tricks that will be critical to making this movie work. Mason Harper is a ski instructor. A bit aloof but quick-witted and talented, Harper is the one that finds the body (or bodies), and immediately becomes the accused by Colin Farrell’s rival detective.
Jesse Plemons as William
You may be wondering why Jesse Plemons’ character doesn’t have a last name. It’s because we don’t know it. A rich enigma, William stays at the hotel year-round and keeps to himself. We’ve seen Plemons play the rich asshole in Windfall from earlier this year and he has the ability to play impenetrable without coming off as poorly written and blank.
Eric Idle & Bowen Yang as Nigel Erikkson & Matthew Lee
The hotel owner and manager respectively, Eric Idle and Bowen Yang are critical when it comes to rounding up the cast. Monty Python royalty Eric Idle deserves yet another chance to show the world how goddamn funny he is, but I also feel like he can play threatening in the same way that Albert Brooks does in Drive. SNL and Las Culturistas icon Bowen Yang is easily the best part of Bros and could do serious damage (in a good way) as the hotel manager reporting to Idle but also trying to do things his own way. Perhaps there’s a bit of a clash there at the top of the ski resort food chain.
So, I have a semblance of a plot here, which centers on the Santos sisters accidentally coming across both of the Albrechts cheating on one another at different times with Kravitz’s Chef Angela Ellis. Patel’s Mason Harper is in love with the chef and makes that known while drunk the night before the murder. Eric Idle’s Nigel and Bowen Yang’s Matthew are constantly bickering about how the lodge should be run, and then Farrell’s detective's confident declaration that he knows why Harper is the murderer gets Benoit Blanc’s antennas up. Jesse Plemons’ rich benefactor of William certainly plays a big role.
If you want to know what happens, reach out to me, Rian Johnson. Let’s make the next Knives Out. It’s what the world needs.