Branagh's Death on the Nile never went near Egypt and waited years for release
Kenneth Branagh's second Hercule Poirot mystery recreated a Nile steamer and the temples of Abu Simbel entirely in Surrey. Shot in 2019 and meant for cinemas that December, the film was postponed again and again during the pandemic, finally opening in February 2022 to mixed reviews and a worldwide gross of $137.3 million.
The project followed Branagh's 2017 Murder on the Orient Express. Agatha Christie's great-grandson James Prichard, who chairs the company managing her estate, had spoken warmly of further films, and in November 2017 20th Century Fox confirmed the sequel, with Michael Green again writing and Branagh directing and starring. The 1937 novel had been filmed once before, in 1978.
Casting ran through 2018 and 2019. Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Letitia Wright, Annette Bening and Russell Brand signed on, along with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, while Tom Bateman returned as Poirot's friend Bouc. Shooting began on September 30, 2019 at Longcross Studios and wrapped on December 18. Plans to film in Morocco were dropped, so the boat and Abu Simbel were built as sets, and a replica of the Tiffany Yellow Diamond stood in for the victim's jewels. Patrick Doyle composed the score, and the nightclub singer Salome's voice comes from recordings by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mavis Staples.
The story adds a prologue set at the Yser bridge in 1914, when a wartime injury leaves the young Poirot with a scarred face and prompts his fiancée to suggest the famous moustache. In 1937 he watches an heiress, Linnet Ridgeway, meet Simon Doyle, fiancé of her friend Jackie; Linnet and Simon marry, and their Egyptian honeymoon cruise becomes the scene of a murder that Poirot must solve.
Release dates slid from December 2019 to several slots in 2020 before the studio pulled the film. Marketing was further complicated by allegations against Hammer, who gave no interviews and barely featured in the trailer. The film still topped the North American box office on its opening weekend with $12.9 million, became a streaming hit that April, and was followed in 2023 by A Haunting in Venice.
Source: Death on the Nile (2022 film)
