Michael Shannon might sign on to glower at people in Rian Johnson's new murder mystery

Rian Johnson’s upcoming brief break from getting yelled at for making Star Wars movies, Knives Out, is putting together a real rogue’s gallery of serious-faced men. Variety reports that Michael Shannon is in talks to join the movie’s cast, where he’d glower alongside already-cast noted stoics Daniel Craig and Lakeith Stanfield, as well as Chris Evans, who will just have to try to tone down his big ol’ puppy dog nature for a couple of minutes while the cameras are on.

Johnson’s next film has been described as a sort of Agatha Christie-ish modern murder mystery, which is both a) hypothetically a throwback to his first film, the high school noir opus Brick, and b), again, a real chance to not get yelled at by Russian robots for making a Star Wars movie with women in it for a minute.

But no break from the realities of space-based fantasy can last forever; Johnson is already on the hook for at least one, and possibly three, new Star Wars movies from Lucasfilm; once Knives Out is done, he’ll have to descend back into the online fandom trenches, beginning production on his planned “trilogy” of Star Wars movies.