Ahead of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6, 'Wake Up Dead Man' writer-director Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig hinted at what to expect from th third part of the 'Knives Out' whodunit film series. After Toronto, the film will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival, on Oct. 8. Before its global Netflix premiere on Dec. 12, the film will be screened in limited theaters on Nov. 26.
Daniel Craig returns as the flamboyant, Southern aristocrat-style detective for a newer, bigger challenge. Not much is known about the new case, aside from the information that Blanc will venture into darker territory this time—the first teaser hints at a religion-centric crime and a darker tone, unlike the previous entries. If Blanc's voiceover in the teaser is any indication, it could be his "most dangerous case yet".
Other cast members include Josh O'Connor, Glenn Clse, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, and many others.
Applauding Johnson's gift for genre-subversion, Craig told Netflix: "You start off thinking you’re watching an old-fashioned sort of Agatha Christie-type mystery — but then it shifts, and you realize you’re watching something entirely different.”
An original creation of Johnson, who was inspired by the most popular detectives in fiction from Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Poirot to Gideon Fell (created by author John Dickson Carr), Blanc made his first appearance in Knives Out (2019), in which he was called upon to investigate the death of a bestselling novelist played by Christopher Plummer. In the sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Blanc travelled to Greece to deal with the case of an eccentric tech billionaire and the strange events at his peculiar vacation hideaway.
Johnson said 'Wake Up Dead Man' is "more similar to the first 'Knives Out' in that it gets back to the real origins of the genre, which predate Agatha Christie, going back to Edgar Allan Poe." Johnson also revealed the film is "grounded" with a "gothic" atmosphere, adding: "It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, so it’s funny and fun, but it’s set in an old stone church, there are lots of graveyards.”
Recently, Johnson had mentioned the "malleable" quality of the whodunit. “I love everything about whodunnits, but one of the things I love most is how malleable the genre is. There’s a whole tonal spectrum from Carr to Christie, and getting to explore that range is one of the most exciting things about making Benoit Blanc movies.”
On coming up with a stellar cast list in all these films, which he likened to "throwing a dinner party," Johnson told Netflix, “We’ve been very lucky with each of these movies to have gathered some of my favourite actors on the planet, and that’s absolutely the case here. They’re also all lovely folks who get along, which is the dinner party aspect of it. When you’re making an ensemble movie like this, I think that’s key.”
As for the inspiration for the titles of these films, Johnson has cited some of the tracks from favourite bands. The first came from a Radiohead song, the second from a Beatles song, and the third, he revealed to Netflix, came from U2's 1997 song from the album 'Pop'. “Pop is a very underrated album, and that song is very right for the title. But I’ve had ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ in my head for a long while, and I first heard the phrase in American folk music.”
