15 Pop Culture Facts About the ‘Knives Out’ Movies
Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film, is now in theaters and will be arriving on Netflix December 12th. Once again written and directed by Rian Johnson, Wake Up Dead Man is, by pretty much all accounts, a worthy follow up to Knives Out and Glass Onion, and worth seeing on the big screen despite its limited theatrical release. Below you’ll find trivia tidbits about all three films and their central character Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, who looks like he’s having the absolute time of his life in the role.
Rian Johnson’s Inspiration
When Entertainment Weekly asked writer and director Rian Johnson about inspiration for the first film, Johnson explained, “Well I had wanted to do a whodunit forever. I grew up reading Agatha Christie’s books; it’s a genre that I deeply, deeply love. It’s been a comfort food for me. I always wanted to do a straight-up whodunit. The first idea was a very conceptual one: As I thought about doing a whodunit, I thought about Hitchcock and his opinion of whodunits. He always said they rely entirely on surprise — one big surprise at the end — and that’s the weakness of them narratively.”
The Knives of ‘Knives Out’
The central set piece of the first Knives Out film was the large circle of knives featured during the interrogation scenes. When asked about it by GQ, Johnson had this to say: “I had that written into the script as a religious icon made of knives. ‘A big halo of knives.’ We were trying to make it work with different configurations. It wasn't quite clicking—and then David Crank, our production designer, found this big circular industrial barbecue grate, literally a few days before we were going to start shooting. They mounted all the knives around it, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God. That's it.’”
A Who’s-Who Whodunit
Johnson explained that part of the appeal of the Knives films is how star-studded they are. “A big part of the inspiration was Christie movies that I grew up watching: Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, the ones with Peter Ustinov as Poirot. And those were big, all-star-cast entertainments. That was something I really, consciously wanted to do with this thing. I said to my producer, ‘We want an all-star cast. We want that old-school, entertaining, we’re-putting-on a-big-show type feel,’” Johnson explained.
“CSI: KFC?”
When asked why he cast the British Daniel Craig as the American Southern gentleman sleuth, Johnson said “I knew that he was funny. Obviously, he's great as Bond—but I had seen him in a bunch of different roles. I had seen him on the stage. I just knew he was this incredible actor with this great range. And the bigger thing, almost, is that I could sense how much he was relishing the idea of giving a big comic performance like this. I could tell how much fun he was going to have. He looked like he was a little kid eyeing a Christmas present. The performance has that joy to it, I think.”
Foghorn or Foote?
Since the first film, many people have speculated that Daniel Craig turned to Looney Tunes character Foghorn Leghorn as the inspiration for Benoit Blanc’s Southern drawl. Johnson has denied it and Craig said the accent was based on the voice of historian Shelby Foote, with a bit of author Tennessee Williams.
There’s Even More to Blanc…
An interview with Craig and Johnson revealed that additional sources of inspiration for Blanc included “Jacques Tati’s debonair but bumbling Monsieur Hulot and Cary Grant’s elegant panache in To Catch a Thief.” Craig also “combed through out-of-print books of Southern expressions.”
‘Knives Out’ vs ‘Glass Onion’
As funny as Knives Out was, Glass Onion ended up being even more comedic. When asked about the slight tonal shift, Johnson said that it all stemmed from having Edward Norton’s tech billionaire character at the center, and how he was informed by real-life tech billionaires.
The Puzzle Box Sequence
Of the puzzle box sequence at the beginning of Glass Onion, Johnson said “It’s work. That’s what always ends up taking the most work, figuring out the introduction. With Knives Out, we start with a big questioning scene in the library. And that was both at the script phase and then also in the editing phase. That’s what we put so much of the work into—getting that humming. It’s really hard. With this one, we do it with the puzzle box invitation. You just try and figure out a way to get everyone introduced, to get what their deal is as quickly as possible, and give it hopefully some kind of fun spine so that the audience doesn’t feel like we’re just grinding through meeting people, they’re actually entertained during it.”
The Island
When explaining why Glass Onion was set on an island, Johnson said “I very much felt like Blanc on the island several times in the recent past and that's a very new experience for me — being new to some of those faces and those worlds and feeling I don't know how this works. What are the rules here? That feeling, I think, very much channeled straight into the story. And it's not even that it makes it more fun. I think that's essential in anything I write, it has to come from somewhere.”
It’s Okay if You Guess the Killer
When asked how he feels when people guess the killer early on in the movie, Johnson had this to say, “It’s more fun if there’s an element of surprise at the end, but honestly, I purposefully tried to have the movie not on that. I hoped the movie was as entertaining whether you guessed it or not.”
Funny? Yes. Parody? No.
In an interview for Knives Out, Johnson explained how, while Knives Out is comedic, it is most definitely not a parody of murder mysteries. “The reference most people have in their head for this kind of stuff is Clue or Murder by Death. It tends to be parody. And kind of cheeky and self-aware, but it's not a parody of murder mysteries. I need that part. The movie part that I'm excited about. But it doesn't really click until there’s also something personal I can work with. It’s like two gears clicking together.”
No Usual Suspects
Johnson has expressed that, besides Blanc, he has no interest in bringing back any characters from previous films, saying to Variety, “I love the fact that each one of these is entirely its own case, entirely its own mystery,” adding, “At this point, I like the idea of having a new group of folks each time.”
Rian Johnson at the Helm
Johnson also ruled out the idea of other directors handling a Knives Out film, saying “Each Knives Out film is something I want to make. If that stops being the case, we won't do another one.”
Wake Up Dead Muppets
Despite the online clamoring for a Knives Out film starring the Muppets alongside Benoit Blanc, Johnson dismissed the idea, saying “I love and respect Muppet movies too much. The reality is, if you put Muppets in a Benoit Blanc movie, it would feel totally wrong because they would be getting murdered. The alternative is to just stick Benoit Blanc into a Muppet movie, which admittedly would be very fun, but would kind of break the reality of what Blanc is.”
The Future is Uncertain
With the release of Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson’s deal with Netflix for two Knives Out sequels is complete, and where the franchise goes from here is unclear. Johnson has expressed some annoyance with Wake Up Dead Man’s limited theatrical release. Plus, he wasn’t fond of adding the subtitle “A Knives Out Mystery” to the titles of his films, so it’s unclear if he’ll pair with Netflix for future installments. Johnson owns the rights.
