Released this Wednesday, September 13 in our theaters, “Mystery in Venice” is the third adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel by Kenneth Branagh. Is a fourth planned?
Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Mystery in Venice… and that’s it? Since William Shakespeare, never has an author interested Kenneth Branagh as much as Agatha Christie, whose actor and director adapted three novels into films. And in particular the one released this Wednesday, September 13 in our theaters, where he directs, among others, Camille Cottin.
Set in the City of the Doges shortly after the end of the Second World War, will this new investigation by Hercule Poirot (still played by Kenneth Branagh himself) be the last of the franchise launched in 2017? This is another mystery. The solution to which is unfortunately not on the screens.
The end of Crime on the Orient-Express announced the departure of the Belgian detective for Egypt. And we saw the cover of the novel “The Pumpkin Festival” (republished under the title “The Halloween Crime” in 1999) in Belfast, his autobiographical and Oscar-winning interlude. But there is no such evidence here.
No doubt because the box office will depend on a possible sequel. Or because Hercule Poirot is withdrawn at the start of the story, until his friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) comes to get him for a case of charlatanism which will turn into murder. What is more commonly called “a Monday in the life of the main hero of Agatha Christie’s work”.
KENNETH BRANAGH MAKES US POWER
At present, there is no new film planned by Kenneth Branagh. But Hercule Poirot has appeared in thirty-three novels and eight short stories, so there is no shortage of material if the filmmaker decides to do it again.
By adapting, why not, “Hercule Poirot’s Holiday”which gave rise to the film Murder in the Sun in 1982, one of six feature films directed by Peter Ustinov, including Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile.
Or by seizing “Poirot leaves the stage”, which marks the death of the character and could allow Kenneth Branagh to close, once and for all, this detective parenthesis (but marked with seriousness) of his career as an actor and director. To better return to Shakespeare afterwards?