Private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) might just turn out to be Rian Johnson’s greatest creation. Introduced in 2019’s Knives Out, Blanc’s syrupy Southern drawl and idiosyncratic approach to solving a mysterious New England death charmed audiences worldwide and launched a modern whodunnit franchise. The third installment in the series, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, has already garnered early rave reviews after screening at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) over the weekend. And now Netflix has released the official trailer, showcasing Blanc tackling the inexplicable death of a parish priest in a spookily Gothic small-town setting. (Very minor spoilers for Knives Out and Glass Onion below.) Knives Out was a masterfully plotted, winning mashup of Clue and Murder on the Orient Express—or any number of adaptations of novels by the grande dame of murder mysteries, Agatha Christie—along with other classics like Deathtrap, Gosford Park, and Murder by Death. Bestselling crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) supposedly committed suicide just after celebrating his 85th birthday with his extended family. But not everyone was satisfied that the death was a suicide—least of all Benoit Blanc, who ultimately revealed the truth in a fittingly dramatic fashion. Fresh off his stint as James Bond, Craig clearly found Blanc a refreshing counter to the 007 franchise, and he and Johnson soon committed to filming a sequel: 2022’s Glass Onion, inspired particularly by the Christie-based “tropical getaway” whodunnit Evil Under the Sun (1982) and an under-appreciated 1973 gem called The Last of Sheila. Blanc traveled to the private island of tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) for a murder-mystery weekend with Bron’s coterie of influencer friends. Naturally, someone was actually murdered, and Blanc had to solve it.
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