At the end of August, Netflix premiered a new film based on the books by author Richard Osman. This was a star-studded adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club, a film that followed a bunch of pensioners who teamed up to solve a cold case. There has been no word yet as to whether this has been enough of a success to warrant a sequel, but there are several additional books to draw from, meaning a follow-up is not out of the question.
This is something that director Christopher Columbus has commented on in a recent interview with Collider, where he explains that he has already studied the other books in the series to better sculpt out his film characters, while also hoping to use a sequel as a way to answer the big talking point of how the movie differentiates from the books, namely the arrest at the end of the flick.
Beware, as Columbus' comments head into spoiler territory for the film.
"I was able to give Joyce, or I was able to give Celia [Imrie] and Helen, and Pierce [Brosnan] and Sir Ben [Kingsley] pages of either dialogue or character description that were essential for their character. So they could read those and bring that to the character. So even if it was a subconscious thing, they knew where their character was, sort of where the origins of those characters were coming from in the book. So everything that was done in the first film is really a setup for subsequent films to come."
Columbus continues with an example: "Bogdan is arrested at the end of the first film. And in the book, he's not arrested. It's only Elizabeth who finds out what Bogdan actually did in terms of Tony Curran, and she lets him go. Well, in terms of the film, we all felt that it would be slightly more interesting, maybe satisfying, if Bogdan were arrested. Certain people who've read the book, a minority, but it's something I'll address. Certain people who read the book were a little concerned that Bogdan got arrested, and they were talking about the fact, 'well, he comes back in book two and three, and he's such an essential character.'
"Never, it was never our intention to keep Bogdan out of those films. I should have actually ended the first film like they ended all of the great James Bond films in the past with 'Bogdan will return in The Man Who Died Twice'. So, of course, he's going to come back. You know, there's a reason that he killed Tony Curran in self-defense, people... just use the slightest bit of imagination and think about what self-defense means. It means he's going to get out of jail very quickly."
Have you watched The Thursday Murder Club yet and would you like a sequel?