Rian Johnson continues to assemble his latest cast of sleuths, suspects, and possible stiffs for Netflix’s Knives Out threequel Wake Up Dead Man.
As per Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter respectively, Scandal’s Kerry Washington and Fatal Attraction’s Glenn Close are joining Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in the murder mystery.
As has become tradition for a Knives Out Mystery, Wake Up Dead Man features a who’s who of must-see talent. Those already announced include Ripley and Fleabag actor Andrew Scott, Civil War’s Cailee Spaeny, and Josh O’Connor – who is fresh off of serving up a storm in steamy tennis drama Challengers.
Their roles in the whodunnit aren’t yet clear but if past Knives Out movies are any indication, it’s going to be a mix of contemporary archetypes and well-rounded characters poking fun at the bad and the beautiful of modern-day society.
Wake Up Dead Man – a name taken from a 1997 U2 track – was first announced earlier in May, complete with a Daniel Craig-narrated teaser that proclaimed Benoit Blanc’s “most dangerous case yet is about to be revealed”.
Whatever comes next, expect something radically different to the frosty reception Benoit Blanc received by the Drysdales in 2019’s Knives Out and the sunny getaway-turned-mystery in Glass Onion.
“I love everything about whodunnits, but one of the things I love most is how malleable the genre is,” Rian Johnson wrote on Twitter prior to the announcement of the third Knives Out movie. “There’s a whole tonal spectrum from [John Dickson] Carr to [Agatha] Christie, and getting to explore that range is one of the most exciting things about making Benoit Blanc movies.”
For more on what’s coming your way, check out our guide to upcoming movies.
