Kenneth Branagh set to return as Poirot in third film

A third movie starring Sir Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot has been written.

The 61-year-old star has played Agatha Christie's detective in both the 2017 movie 'Murder on the Orient Express' and the recent sequel 'Death on the Nile' and 20th Century Studios President Steve Asbell has confirmed that another film is in the pipeline – which is set to mark a shift in tone from previous outings.

Asbell told The Hollywood Reporter: "We have the Poirot franchise, we have other Christie stories. I love these films, I love Ken.

"We have a third script written, by Michael Green, that is a pretty daring shift in genre and in tone. It's post-war Venice and an adaptation of one of the lesser-known novels. So I think you'll see the moustache again."

The studio boss also indicated that Branagh will be behind the camera for the third movie.

He said: "Ken is Poirot, but Ken is also the series."

Kenneth recently suggested that he wants to make a "Christie-Verse" of films featuring Poirot and her other famous detective Miss Marple.

He said: "That'd be fun. You might've just started the Christie-Verse, right there.

"I'd love to see Marple in a movie universe, I really would. She's a brilliant, brilliant detective. I mean, not officially a detective, she's a brilliant sleuth."

'Murder on the Orient Express' featured an all-star cast that included Dame Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer and Johnny Depp and Kenneth was under pressure not to let his co-stars down.

He said: "There was a pleasure of being in a group of elite athletes, as it were. And rather than it feeling like a posey or smug club, what I found was that nobody wanted to let anybody else down. You didn't want to be in a scene with Judi Dench and not be very good, or be the one delivering the line to Johnny Depp or trying to share the laugh with Michelle Pfeiffer and not do it well."