Hercule Poirot may have finally met his match, as Villanelle, a.k.a. actress Jodie Comer, who currently stars in BBC America’s Killing Eve, looks all set to board Death on the Nile.
The Killing Eve star will have a lead role in the next big Agatha Christie movie, according to a recent interview with director Sir Kenneth Branagh. Digital Spy reports Sir Ken told Empire magazine that Jodie will join Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer to form the “central trio” of characters.
Since Gal has already been pegged as heiress Linnet Ridgeway Doyle, we think that leaves Armie playing her new husband Simon Doyle, and Jodie his jilted fiancée Jacqueline de Bellefort.
That role was previously played by Mia Farrow in the 1978 version of Christie’s famous tale, which sees the famous Belgian detective try to solve a murder case while on a cruise down the Nile.
Sir Ken’s new version already sounds like it’ll be just as star-studded as its 2017 predecessor Murder on the Orient Express, which starred Dame Judi Dench, woman-of-the-moment Olivia Colman, Sir Derek Jacobi, Daisy Ridley, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Leslie Odom Jr., Willem Defoe and Penélope Cruz alongside Sir Ken’s tache-tastic Hercule Poirot.
And sure enough, Sir Ken admitted living up to the previous cast has been hard.
“We’re in the process of casting the rest,” he reportedly told Empire. “We want the same sense of event. Something I’m pleased about is that I bump into a lot actors I admire and they ask, ‘Can I be in the next one?!’ So, I’ll absolutely be taking them up on that.”
Fingers crossed one of them will be Sandra Oh.
Comer is racking up the roles, it was recently announced she’ll star opposite Ryan Reynolds in the forthcoming action flick Free Guy, based in a video game world. You can look for Death on the Nile in theaters on October 2, 2020. In the meantime, of course, Comer is set to return to BBCA for the second season of Killing Eve on April 7.
Can you imagine the damage Villanelle could do on a cruise?