India, Jan. 24 -- In the latest Knives Out mystery, Wake Up Dead Man (2025), there is a scene in which detective Benoit Blanc examines a reading list of famous crime novels.

There's The Hollow Man (1935) by John Dickson Carr; Dorothy L Sayers's Whose Body? (1923) and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841). The only author with two entries on the list is Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), which celebrates its centenary this year, and The Murder at the Vicarage, the first Miss Marple novel.

Rian Johnson, who has written and directed all three Knives Out films, has said they are directly inspired by Christie, and acknowledged her influence in multiple interviews.

There have been several other such films, ...