Rian Johnson will never make a horror movie.
The ‘Knives Out’ director admitted that while he enjoys watching horror films, the genre is not one that he would ever be tempted to work in.
Speaking part of Film Independent’s ‘Coffee Talks’ series with fellow director Karyn Kusama, who has worked on horrors including ‘Jennifer’s Body’ and ‘The Invitation’, he said: "To be honest, it’s a genre that, because my family was really religious when I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to see a lot of intense stuff. It’s not a genre I have a grounding in emotionally.
"A lot of friends like [Kusama] included are incredible filmmakers who engage with this genre and make movies that just amaze me. It’s not something that, for whatever reason, has drawn me."
However, Rian has been inspired by a number of horror movies, including Ridley Scott’s 1979 original, ‘Alien’ and Jonathan Glazer’s thriller ‘Under the Skin’ from 2013.
He explained: "’Under the Skin’ I would count as a horror movie of sorts, and that’s one of my top five. It depends on how you define horror, I suppose."
Meanwhile, Rian is currently working on ‘Knives Out 2’ which won’t be a direct sequel, but will star Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc with a brand-new mystery to solve.
He said: "In my mind, I don’t even think of it in terms of like a sequel … ever since we started working on this I was like, look, if we can keep this going, the same way Agatha Christie wrote a bunch of Poirot novels.
"I mean, do that with Blanc and keep making more mysteries. Whole new cast, whole new location, whole new mystery. It’s just another Benoit Blanc mystery and it seems like there’s just so many different things you can do with it, you know? It seems like it’d be really fun."
No horror movies for Rian Johnson
