Daniel Craig has been everywhere you look these days, which is to be expected when he’s hitting the promotional trail hard for No Time to Die, one of the pandemic’s longest-delayed movies that also marks his fifth and final outing as James Bond.
The latest era of the 007 mythos draws to an epic, fitting and more than a little controversial conclusion, but the actor has certainly bowed out in style. Once the dust settles on the 25th installment, there’s a genuine argument to be made that Craig might just be the best Bond we’ve ever seen, based on the complexities and depth he’s brought to the character.
That’s another argument for another time, though, and the 53 year-old won’t be absent from our screens for too long. Next year brings Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel to Netflix, which the streamer acquired in a mind-boggling deal said to be worth at least $400 million. In a new interview with Empire, Craig teased that the second outing for Benoit Blanc will be better than the first.
“I’m so lucky to have Rian in my life. He’s such a great writer. That script arrived and I was literally like, ‘Are you kidding me?’. I couldn’t believe that he wanted me to play it. I was going, ‘It says Southern accent you went here. Really?’. And he’s like, ‘Yeah?’. We’ve just finished the second one, literally weeks ago. They’ve just wrapped up in Serbia. Dare I say it’s better? We’ll see. I don’t want to tempt fate. It’s different, and that’s the amazing thing. It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, but it’s very different. I’m very excited about it.”
Knives Out was a critical and commercial darling after earning $311 million at the box office on a $40 million budget, landing writer and director Rian Johnson an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and winding up with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 97%. Expectations are sky high for the next chapter, then, but there’s more than enough talent on board to deliver.