Kenneth Branagh is going to Venice. He is brushing his mustache and packing his mustache guards. The Oscar-nominated director will go back to the Christie universe with A Haunting in Venice, which is another Poirot mystery with a focus on mustaches. It comes after Death on the Nile.
A Haunting in Venice doesn’t do anything new or different. Branagh is putting together a group of actors from all over the world to act against his silly mouth bristles. Christie’s “Halloween Party” was the inspiration for Branagh’s new movie, which will reunite Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, and Riccardo Scamarico with whom they worked in “Belfast.”
“This is a great step forward for Hercule Poirot and the Agatha Christie franchise as a whole,” Branagh said. “It is based on a complicated, little-known mystery story that takes place on Halloween in a beautiful city. It is a great chance for us as filmmakers, and we can’t wait to give our loyal moviegoers something truly scary.”
In The Halloween Party, a retired Poirot goes to a Halloween seance at a haunted palazzo against his will. Now things start to get strange. Poirot is brought out of retirement when one of the party guests is killed. At a party where Hercule Poirot is there, no one is safe.
Death on the Nile has been out long enough for it to be the go-to movie for anyone who wants to fall asleep on a cross-country flight. This means that it can be considered a movie that has come out. For a long time, it seemed like we’d never find out what happened after Murder on the Orient Express, but Branagh came back with the story of how he got that big mustache.
Everyone agrees that putting out Death on the Nile was a disaster. The pandemic pushed back the release of the movie, and then there were a lot of PR nightmares, like the Armie Hammer scandal, which happened right in the middle of the movie’s release. That was a good enough excuse for co-stars Letitia White and Russell Brand to talk about their doubts about vaccines.
The movie didn’t do very well when it came out. The reviews were mostly negative, and the movie made $130 million at the box office around the world. With a reported $90 million budget, that’s not a very good return. But its low box office could have been caused by a number of things, like the pandemic or the abuse claims against Armie Hammer, so 20th Century Studios may have decided to try again. Still, Branagh said he wanted to make a Christie Cinematic Universe, so there will be movies in that universe.
20th Century Studios wants to get the movie out in theaters in 2023, so they will start making it in November.