'Knives Out 2' Adds 'Outer Banks' Actress Madelyn Cline To Its List Of Suspects

Madelyn Cline, who plays Sarah Cameron on Netflix's hit show Outer Banks, has just become the latest member of Rian Johnson's Knives Out 2 cast. She joins an impressive roster of talent in the upcoming murder mystery sequel, including Daniel Craig returning as the Southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc and newcomers Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom Jr., Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monáe, and Edward Norton.

According to Deadline, Outer Banks breakout actress Madelyn Cline will be mixing it up with a bunch of A-listers in Knives Out 2. I have not seen Outer Banks, but Cline also briefly appeared in the second season of another Netflix show, Stranger Things, playing Tina, a popular high school girl who threw that Halloween party where Steve Harrington got his groove on. Her previous credits include The CW series The Originals, the HBO comedy series Vice Principals, Joel Edgerton's 2018 movie Boy Erased, and more. This will mark her first major role in a studio film since she made a splash in Outer Banks, the teen-centric mystery drama that took Netflix by storm when it debuted during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

I'm not super familiar with Cline's work, but I've said this before and I'll say it again: I trust Rian Johnson implicitly. He's one of my favorite working filmmakers, and if he thinks Cline is the best fit for a role he wrote, I'm inclined to believe him. (Though cynically, since Knives Out 2 and 3 are now Netflix projects, part of me wonders if the streamer came to Johnson with a list of people who are already in their ecosystem and asked him to cast one of them in an effort to boost their profile, which could in turn draw more attention to their show.)

Johnson is returning to write and direct this sequel, and his producer Ram Bergman is reuniting with him to keep a watchful eye over the production. Johnson, Bergman, and Craig all signed an jaw-dropping deal with Netflix to make Knives Out 2 and Knives Out 3, and it ended up being one of the biggest streaming deals ever, across any company. Those three guys are poised to make more than $100 million each from the deal, which involved the rights to the franchise moving from Lionsgate's theatrical division to Netflix – yet another way the streamer has disrupted the traditional Hollywood ecosystem and poached high-quality talent over the past few years.