After bringing Hercule Poirot to the big screen with this year’s Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh looks set to bring Agatha Christie’s master detective back to the big screen with an adaptation of Death on the Nile, and speaking to the Associated Press , the actor and filmmaker has now revealed that he’d like to see a shared cinematic universe based upon the author’s body of work:
“I think there are possibilities, aren’t there? With 66 books and short stories and plays, she — and she often brings people together in her own books actually, so innately — she enjoyed that. You feel as though there is a world — just like with Dickens, there’s a complete world that she’s created — certain kinds of characters who live in her world — that I think has real possibilities.”
Although there is no confirmation of this becoming a reality, Branagh added that “I bet they’ve been thinking about it though,” when referring to the executives at Fox.
Whilst the future of the franchise may remain in question following the sale of Fox to Disney, it is clear that Christie’s novels are ripe for re-tellings, and a universe that links them all together may well be within reach now that this latest attempt to cover Christie’s works has begun.
What starts out as a lavish train ride through Europe quickly unfolds into one of the most stylish, suspenseful and thrilling mysteries ever told. From the novel by best-selling author Agatha Christie, “Murder on the Orient Express” tells the tale of thirteen strangers stranded on a train, where everyone’s a suspect. One man must race against time to solve the puzzle before the murderer strikes again.
Murder on the Orient Express stars Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, alongside Johnny Depp as Edward Ratchett, Michelle Pfeiffer as Caroline Hubbard, Judi Dench as Princess Dragomiroff, Leslie Odom Jr. as Doctor Arbuthnot, Daisy Ridley as Mary Debenham, Josh Gad as Hector MacQueen, Penelope Cruz as Pilar Estravados, Olivia Colman as Hildegarde Schmidt, Derek Jacobi as Masterman, Willem Dafoe as Gerhard Hardman, Sergei Polunin as Count Andrenyi, Lucy Boynton as Countess Andrenyi, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Beniamino Marquez, Marwan Kenzari as Pierre Michel and Tom Bateman as Bouc.
