Kenneth Branagh is planning to straight up murder someone. But don’t worry – it’s all in the cause of cinematic art (or so he would have you believe). According to The Wrap, the Thor and Cinderella director is looking to tackle something both closer to and further away from home this time, as he’s in talks for 20th Century Fox’s new version of Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express.
Writer Michael Green – who is a busy man these days – is at work on a new adaptation of the murder mystery. The book was first published in 1934, and sees Poirot (“monsieur Parrot?”) exercising the little grey cells over the murder of an American tycoon on a journey from Istanbul (Constantinople at the time) to Paris. This new film has been in development since late 2013, with Ridley Scott, Simon Kinberg and Mark Gordon all aboard as producers.
Obviously, it’s not the first time Christie’s story has been brought to the screen – there have been various TV versions and an Oscar-winning 1974 big screen adaptation, which saw Albert Finney as Poirot and Ingrid Bergman lifting a trophy for her supporting performance.
It’s far from a done deal yet, but Branagh feels like the right man for the job given his work on Shakespeare adaptations and some of his ability to wrangle sizeable casts. The bigger question will be who they can get to fill Finney’s and – on the small screen – David Suchet’s suit and ‘tache.