Rian Johnson Makes You Wait 40 Minutes For Daniel Craig In Wake Up Dead Man: Why He Took The Risk
Exclusive: Rian Johnson takes Knives Out 3 back to basics, promising a lean, razor-sharp whodunit—and revealing how the new case strips the murder mystery to its core.
Heads up: if you buy a ticket to Wake Up Dead Man for Daniel Craig and his drawling detective, you are not seeing Benoit Blanc for a while. He does not show up until about the 40-minute mark. That is not a typo.
Why Blanc is fashionably late this time
Writer-director Rian Johnson told GamesRadar+ he structured this third Knives Out movie much closer to classic whodunits than the last two. Think old-school setup: meet the suspects, the bad thing happens, then the detective walks in. It is a conscious reset, not a stunt.
"In the first act, you meet all the suspects, then the murder happens, and then the detective shows up."
Johnson also says the movie needed that front-loaded time because of what it is about. He wanted the tone right and the lead character, Rev. Jud Duplenticy, fully defined — including what religion means to him — before unleashing Blanc on the story. His bet: if the actor anchoring those first 40 minutes is compelling, you will not spend the whole time asking where Daniel Craig is.
So who is holding down the opening stretch?
Josh O'Connor. He plays Rev. Jud Duplenticy, a guilt-ridden ex-boxer who gets shipped to a small-town parish in upstate New York after a violent run-in with a superior. He is assigned to help Monsignor Wicks — played by Josh Brolin — a bruiser of a priest whose way of running the place quickly makes Jud bristle. Wicks squeezes certain parishioners, tosses out firebrand sermons that chase newcomers away, and generally operates with a swagger Jud cannot stomach. Jud does not hide his disdain, and when Wicks turns up dead, that history does him no favors. Accused and cornered, Jud ends up teaming with Blanc to untangle both the case and his own crisis of faith.
Johnson on O'Connor (and the series blueprint)
This is actually how these movies secretly work: Blanc solves the puzzle, but the heart of each story belongs to someone else. First time out it was Ana de Armas, then Janelle Monae in the sequel, and now O'Connor. Johnson wanted a lead the audience can lock onto instantly — and after seeing O'Connor's range, then meeting him, he decided he was the guy people would want to spend a whole movie with. That is the behind-the-scenes-y creative choice underwriting Blanc's delayed entrance.
When you can see it
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery hits theaters on November 26 in a limited run, then drops on Netflix worldwide on December 12.