Michael Shannon, Lakeith Stanfield join Rian Johnson's 'Knives Out'

Image from Uproxx

By Darian Scalamoni

            Rian Johnson received plenty of backlash for his shot at the Star Wars franchise with his 2017 effort, The Last Jedi but his next film won’t deal with intergalactic warfare at all. His next film, Knives Out, is being described as a modern-day murder mystery in the same vein as the classic Agatha Christie style. According to Variety and Deadline respectively, 2-time Oscar nominee Michael Shannon and Lakeith Stanfield will join the film.

            No word yet on who Shannon will play in the movie but Stanfield is set to play a detective alongside Daniel Craig, who was the first member of the cast announced a few months ago. Chris Evans also joined the film last week following his announcement that he had just finished filming the next Avengers movie which is the last on his long Marvel contract.

            Shannon has had a busy year between his role as the villain in Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning pic, The Shape of Water, starring in the war movie, 12 Strong and then in TV roles in Paramount Network’s Waco and HBO original movie, Fahrenheit 451. He’ll be seen next in AMC’s limited series, The Little Drummer Girl.

            Stanfield, best known for his work in Get Out and the FX comedy, Atlanta has had a big year as well. In addition to the second season of the aforementioned show airing, he also starred in the indie breakout, Sorry to Bother You. He’ll be seen next in The Girl in the Spider’s Web and is currently filming the next film from the Safdie brothers, Uncut Gems alongside Adam Sandler.

            This movie keeps getting bigger and bigger and I’m definitely excited to see all of these terrific actors’ team with Rian Johnson on a smaller drama. Though I don’t hate The Last Jedi like some others, I wasn’t crazy about it either. However, Looper is a terrific movie and I hope that with Craig, Evans, Stanfield and Shannon it’ll help boost Knives Out to be a great ensemble flick. The movie will begin filming later this year, probably setting up a Fall 2019 release.