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Knives Out 3 will begin filming later this year with Daniel Craig reprising his role as Benoit Blanc. Producer Katie McNeill has joined Rian Johnson's T-Street partners for the film. No casting updates have emerged yet, but Johnson has been writing the script since the end of the 2023 writers strike.

The Benoit Blanc mystery Knives Out 3 has received a major filming update after months of silence. Following on from 2019’s Knives Out, Netflix would pick up the rights for two sequels in a massive $469 million deal. Drawing much of his inspiration from the work of renowned mystery novelist Agatha Christie, writer/director Rian Johnson would later establish his 2022 sequel, Glass Onion, as a standalone mystery with only Daniel Craig’s brilliant southern detective returning. In October last year, Johnson confirmed he had resumed work on the threequel’s script following the conclusion of the 2023 writers strike.

Per a new report from Deadline,...

As Kenneth Branagh brings his third Hercule Poirot film to theaters with “A Haunting in Venice,” fans of the Agatha Christie character might debate: Who is the best actor to ever play the mustachioed Belgian detective? And which versions simply didn’t work?

We’ve compiled a list of the most notable actors to portray the famously fussy sleuth —from Tony Randall to PBS favorite David Suchet — and ranked them with both how true they are to Christie’s vision and how enjoyable their portrayal is to audience.

MGM

7. Tony Randall (1965)

The “Odd Couple” actor’s one outing as the detective in the Frank Tashlin-directed film “The Alphabet Murders” leans very hard into comedy. The result: Despite the mustache and bald cap and an occasionally passable accent, we get very little of “the little grey cells” character we expect and far more sight gigs and slapstick.

Prime Video

6. John Malkovich...

Mes enfants! A Haunting in Venice marks the third entry in Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie movie series, finally giving us enough evidence to sift through in order to solve the present mystery: who is the best screen Hercule Poirot?

Taking into account appearance, accent, mannerisms, brilliance of mind, vanity, theatricality, humour, pathos, and of course the all-important moustache, here’s our ranking from most unfortunately disappointing version of the detective, to Poirot perfection.

A bit of housekeeping: only English-language screen Poirots have been included, so no radio, animated, international or videogame versions appear below, nor do bit-part sketch comedy Hercules. The nine actors in contention range almost a century in time, several inches in height, and vastly in their take on what makes a proper Poirot.

9. Tony Randall in The Alphabet Murders (1965)

A sense of humour is key to Poirot. His fastidiousness and affectations have always made him a...

If you thought you'd seen the last of Hercule Poirot, think again. Agatha Christie's famous Belgian detective, who has appeared in countless of her mystery novels, returns in "A Haunting in Venice," which is set to premiere on Sept. 15. The movie is based on Christie's 1969 novel "Hallowe'en Party," which revolves around Poirot embroiled in another murder mystery. The original story takes place at a Halloween party, while the upcoming adaptation sees the detective at a séance.

"A Haunting in Venice" coproducer and director Kenneth Branagh is set to reprise his role as Poirot for the third time in the upcoming film. He first made his debut as Poirot in the star-studded 2017 film "Murder on the Orient Express." Five years later, he returned as Poirot in the 2022 movie "Death on the Nile," which also had a stacked cast. The third film in the Branagh trilogy will also feature huge stars...

French sales and co-production company Charades has forged an alliance with Italy’s I Wonder Pictures to jointly seek out projects by under-the-radar Italian cinema directors that they can board as co-producers and distribute in Italy and around the world.

The pact between Charades, a prominent Paris-based indie outfit headed by veteran sales agent and former Wild Bunch exec Carole Baraton, and I Wonder, a growing niche Italian distributor owned and operated by Biografilm Festival founder Andrea Romeo, reflects the increased international interest in new Italian cinema and also the need for European companies to join forces as the market consolidates.

The first collaboration between the two outfits will be on “Amanda,” the directorial debut of Italian screenwriter Carolina Cavalli, a writer on Netflix Italian original series “Zero.”

Set in Turin, “Amanda” is about a 24-year-old woman who, having returned back to her native Turin after a stint in Paris,...

Virtual meetings, panels and networking to take place September 12-13.

New projects from producers and production companies behind The Father, Born To Be Blue, Mustang and I’m No Longer Here are among the roster at the virtual 16th Ontario Creates International Financing Forum (iff) set to run from September 12-13.

The two-day co-financing and co-production market, which will run online due to the pandemic, serves international and Canadian producers developing mostly English-language projects and takes place in association with Toronto International Film Festival.

Sessions encompass one-on-one producer and executive meetings with 42 executives in attendance including new companies like Voltage Pictures,...

John Malkovich and “Harry Potter” star Rupert Grint have signed on for “The ABC Murders,” an Agatha Christie adaptation for the BBC in Britain and Amazon in the U.S. Shooting gets underway in June and will see Malkovich become the latest actor to take on the role of the famously mustachioed Belgian detective.

Kenneth Branagh played the sleuth in the 2017 film adaptation of “Murder on the Orient Express” and is reprising the role in a remake of “Death on the Nile.” David Suchet and Alfred Molina are among those to have played the part on the small screen.

Grint has signed on to play Inspector Crome. The cast also includes Andrew Buchan (“Broadchurch”), Eamon Farren (“Twin Peaks”), Tara Fitzgerald (“Game of Thrones”), Bronwyn James (“Harlots”), and Freya Mavor (“The Sense of an Ending”).

Based on the classic 1936 Christie novel, the series will run to three parts. British pubcaster the...

By Lee Pfeiffer

The cruel loss of legendary cinematic figures continues into the new year with the death of Anita Ekberg in Italy at age 83. The precise cause of death is not known at this time but she had suffered from a long illness. Ekberg was Swedish by birth but was often mistaken as a native of Italy because of her close association with Fellini and his films. She was named Miss Sweden as a teenager and competed in the Miss Universe contest before her statuesque figure ensured a career in show business during an era when full-bosomed sex sirens were all the rage. Hollywood studios were particularly on the lookout for the next exotic European beauty and Ekberg filled the bill perfectly. She slogged through bit parts uncredited in major studio productions before landing a prominent role opposite John Wayne and Lauren Bacall in the 1955 hit "Blood Alley" (in...

Anita Ekberg

A former Miss Sweden who became an international sex symbol after dancing in the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita, Anita Ekberg has died in hospital in Rome at the age of 83. The charismatic star, who set out to make a career in Hollywood even before she could speak English, also enjoyed success as a model.

Best known in cinema for her partnership with Federico Fellini, which also saw her shine in Intervista as late as 1987, she will be remembered for films like War And Peace, The Glass Sphinx, and Poirot thriller The Alphabet Murders. She enjoyed a brief career as a horror icon and also did television and radio work, the latter proving that it wasn't only her body with which she could captivate an audience.

During the last few years of her life, Ekberg fell on hard times following a robbery and fire at her home.

Miscasting in films has always been a problem. A producer hires an actor thinking that he or she is perfect for a movie role only to find the opposite is true. Other times a star is hired for his box office draw but ruins an otherwise good movie because he looks completely out of place.

There have been many humdinger miscastings. You only have to laugh at John Wayne’s Genghis Khan (with Mongol moustache and gun-belt) in The Conqueror (1956), giggle at Marlon Brando’s woeful upper class twang as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and cringe at Dick Van Dyke’s misbegotten cockney accent in Mary Poppins (1964). But as hilarious as these miscastings are, producers at the time didn’t think the same way, until after the event. At least they add a bit of camp value to a mediocre or downright awful movie.

In rare cases,...

I didn't have high hopes for The First Time (1952), despite my Tashlin mania: I'd tried to watch Marry Me Again (1953), his other marital comedy starring Robert Cummings (known in my household as "the Butcher of Strasburg" after his role in Anthony Mann's 1949 Reign of Terror), and found the gag-happy, sketch-comedy approach unsatisfactory within such a constrained domestic setting and with a straight actor instead of a comedian in the lead. And the jokes about shooting down "Japs" in the war are pretty...bad. As a result, I only put The First Time on for a minute to see what it was like...and then ended up watching the whole thing.

It's very funny, and Cummings, along with Barbara Hale, is really good in it. No, really.

It's also very interesting, and quite subversive at times...Tashlin often seems to favour a kind of masculinism, in a slightly tiresome "Fathers for Justice" way,...