Netflix isn’t always keen to give its movies a substantial release in theaters, but Daniel Craig hopes they’ll make an exception for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. The actor told Variety that he hopes the third Knives Out film gets to play in theaters for longer than a single week, which is all Netflix gave Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
“You know I do,” Craig said. “Hopefully, Netflix will push it out a bit, and people will get to see it. The people I speak to — the fans, I suppose — all they want to do is take their families and go see it at the cinemas. That’s all they want to do. Hopefully we can give them that experience.” Wake Up Dead Man is slated to debut on Netflix in 2025 but doesn’t have an official release date, so there’s still plenty of time for the sequel to receive some sort of theatrical release. Netflix rolled out Glass Onion in 600 theaters, which remains the biggest release the streaming service has given any of its movies. Will Netflix do the same (or more) for Wake Up Dead Man?
The first Knives Out movie grossed $312 million on a budget of just $40 million. Netflix then made a deal with writer/director Rian Johnson for a whopping $465 million for two sequels. At the time, sources said that Johnson, Craig, and producer Ram Bergman could walk away with upward of $100 million each. Now, you can count me as someone who would love to see the Knives Out sequels in theaters, but for that sort of money, I think they knew what they were getting into.
Wake Up Dead Man naturally features Craig as detective Benoit Blanc alongside a supporting cast which includes Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Chuch. We don’t know all that much about the plot, but Brolin has said that the film is more like the first one than the second. “I loved the acting in both of them. I preferred the first one, and the third one felt more like the first one,” Brolin said. “[Rian] doesn’t come off as this, but he has this incredible control over his set. You know, he just has a major presence that reminds me of Denis [Villeneuve, Dune and Sicario director], that reminds me of the Coens [directors of No Country for Old Men, True Grit, and Hail, Caesar!], that reminds me of those types of directors. And he’s a great writer.“
