NEW YORK – The first two Knives Out films reimagined the whodunnit with wit, whimsy and star-studded casting.
But the third film enters more philosophical territory as super sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) takes on a murder mystery in a small Catholic community – and the story explores a crisis of faith.
Debuting on Netflix on Dec 12, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery sees the good detective once again sifting through a string of murder suspects, this time following the puzzling death of a divisive priest played by Josh Brolin.
Josh O’Connor (Challengers, 2024) portrays a younger priest who becomes the chief suspect, with the rest of the ensemble cast including Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington and Andrew Scott.
At a New York screening in November, Rian Johnson, the movie’s 51-year-old writer and director, says the idea came from a discussion with Craig after the premiere of Glass Onion (2022), the sequel to the original Knives Out (2019).
“We both agreed that we were proud of Glass Onion, but it would feel really good to kind of ground the next one.
“And for me, that meant making it personal. So, I had this idea of making it about faith and religion.
“I grew up very Christian and I’m not a believer any more,” explains the American film-maker. He received two Oscar nominations, for Best Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, for the earlier movies.
“But when I was younger, my personal relationship with Christ was very ingrained in my identity, and so today, it’s something I have very deep, very personal, very complicated feelings about.”
Folding these themes into a light-hearted, tentpole franchise was daunting, admits Johnson, who also wrote and directed science-fiction blockbusters such as Looper (2012) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).
But Craig was on board from the start. “Daniel was, like, ‘Sounds great, let’s try it.’”
Director Rian Johnson (left) and actor Daniel Craig at the premiere of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery during the BFI London Film Festival in London on Oct 8.
PHOTO: AFP
The leading man knew the tone of this Knives Out instalment would be different, but was confident Johnson could pull it off.
Says the 57-year-old English actor: “We talked at length about the direction we wanted the movie to go in – and then I just said, ‘See you when you’ve written it.’”
Craig, who headlined five James Bond films between 2006 and 2021, including Casino Royale and Skyfall, reflects on the tightrope act of continuing a successful series.
“I mean, how lucky am I to be in a franchise? But there are the pitfalls of a franchise, which are: Do you replicate? Do you want to stay away from a pastiche of the character?’” says the star, who also starred in the mystery thriller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011).
But he believes Johnson’s script reconciles all the different elements while also adding a new layer to the larger-than-life Blanc.
“There’s a journey for him in this movie that I don’t think exists in the first two, and I think that was probably the key,” says Craig.
Wake Up Dead Man, which has a 95 per cent critics’ rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, has been praised for its handling of the subject of faith. But completing the script took a toll on Johnson.
“I was really in a dark place when I was writing it. This was a very hard script to write because I was aiming to take this thing that I have deep but conflicted feelings about, and try and represent all the different sides of myself in the characters,” he says.
Josh O’Connor (left) and Daniel Craig in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
PHOTO: NETFLIX
Embodying this is the scene where Craig and O’Connor’s characters meet and butt heads, one a logically minded atheist and the other a man of faith.
Craig pushed for a rewrite “to make it a bit harder because I was convinced that the stronger the argument, from both sides, the better the relationship would be”, he says.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever made friends by arguing with somebody, but it sometimes can be a good way in.”
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Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery premieres on Netflix on Dec 12.
