Rian Johnson Now Thinks Making TV Is ‘Much More Fun’ Than Movies

Tony Maglio
·2 min read
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Now that Rian Johnson has discovered television, the future of the “Knives Out” franchise is in big trouble.

OK, so not really. But the red-hot “Glass Onion” writer-director told a gathering of TV critics on Sunday that his experience creating and writing the upcoming Peacock series “Poker Face” was “much more fun” than penning feature-length screenplays, like “Looper,” “Brick,” and presumably the “Star Wars” stuff.

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Johnson has directed television before, notably the classic “Ozymandias” episode of “Breaking Bad” Season 5, but he had never created a series before “Poker Face” — so he never really spent time in a writers room. The collaborative experience beat the hell out of the solitude that came with his movie work.

“I honestly had a blast,” Johnson said at NBCUniversal’s Television Critics Association winter press tour day. “Writing in terms of my own features where I just sit in a room and eat horribly and feel constantly stressed that I’m way behind on my deadline— this is much more fun being in a room with a group of people.”

“It also felt never less-personal, I still felt like I was driving the stories and really shaping them,” he added. “I really loved it.”

Johnson’s Netflix deal guarantees us a “Knives Out 3,” and he’s said he wants to do more.

Writing for series is “a completely different process” than film, Johnson continued, so he hired not one, but two different showrunners: Nora and Lilla Zuckerman. (OK, so in some ways they can be considered a package deal.) The sisters were up to the task on “Poker Face,” the highly-anticipated “Columbo”-type detective series on Peacock starring Natasha Lyonne (“Russian Doll”), who also executive produces.

Johnson continued to sing the praises of television in front of the ballroom full of television reports and critics — if nothing else, the man knows his audience — saying he preferred the “pace” of this newfound process vs. film. Each hour-long “Poker Face” episode took about three weeks (one for prep, two for shooting) to complete. Compare that with making one film over the course of “several years,” as he put it.

“I loved that in each episode we’re in a different environment, it’s a whole new cast— it’s like making 10 mini movies,” Johnson said. “I literally dove into it like it was one of my movies. I really jumped completely into the deep end of the pool.”

Jump into “Poker Face” when it premieres January 26 on Peacock.

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