Hercule Poirot is back on the case at 20th Century Fox. Per THR, the studio will follow up Murder on the Orient Express and stay in the Agatha Christie business with an adaptation of Death on the Nile, the 1937 novel that finds Christie's brilliant investigator on tasked with another murder mystery while on vacation in Egypt.

Kenneth Branagh is expected to return as director and reprise his role as the mustachioed investigator for his journey on a killer riverboat cruise, though no deal is currently in place. Screenwriter Michael Green, who's coming off one hell of a year with work on Murder on the Orient Express, Logan, Blade Runner 2049 and Starz's American Gods, is set to return to pen the script for the sequel.

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Image via Paramount Pictures

Murder on the Orient Express assembled an all-star cast including Branagh, Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley, Michelle Pfieffer, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Johny Depp and Dame Judi Dench, and has earned critical praise (read Matt's full review here) along with $51 million domestically since landing in theaters earlier this month. Add to that the $96 million in overseas ticket sales, and the moderately budgeted $55 million thriller has earned a worldwide total of more than $148 million in just ten days.

One of Christie's most popular stories, Death on the Nile follows the social elite and high society on another deadly exotic adventure when Poirot's vacation leads him to a love triangle gone bad. The novel was previously adapted to film with the 1978 film starring Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury and David Niven alongside Peter Ustinov's Inspector Poirot.

Here's the official Death on the Nile book synopsis via Harper Collins:

"Beloved detective Hercule Poirot embarks on a journey to Egypt in one of Agatha Christie’s most famous mysteries, Death on the Nile.

The tranquility of a cruise along the Nile was shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway had been shot through the head. She was young, stylish, and beautiful. A girl who had everything . . . until she lost her life.

Hercule Poirot recalled an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: "I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger." Yet in this exotic setting nothing is ever quite what it seems."

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Image via 20th Century Fox