Rian Johnson Says He Hopes He Can Change His KNIVES OUT Film Titles to A BENOIT BLANC MYSTERY Moving Forward
This month, director Rian Johnson delivered fans another incredible murder mystery with the sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. After the first film, Knives Out, premiered in theatres, Johnson quickly signed on to a deal with Netflix, which agreed to a second and third film in the franchise, and possibly more. These promised to hire a brand new star-studded cast each time and tell a new whodunnit style story with the same wit, as well as the same detective, as the first.
Johnson agreed, as did Daniel Craig, who plays southern charmer Detective Benoit Blanc in the pictures. But the one hiccup in the plan was that Netflix wanted to be sure that the two films were linked, so that fans could be sure to recognize the franchise. The first film dealt with the knife collection in Harlan Thrombey’s home, and a knife served as the murder weapon in his death, so the title made sense.
The second film, Glass Onion, referred to the bar the group of friends frequented when they met, and Miles Bron’s island estate comes with a glass dome building that is named after it as well. But when the film was being marketed, in an effort to connect the two film, Netflix decided to tack on “A Knives Out Mystery” to the sequel. This really frustrated the director, as the name Knives Out doesn’t correlate to this, or to the future stories in the franchise.
He does understand why they did it though. Johnson explained on The Filmcast podcast (via /Film):
"The thing is, though, I totally get it. It's not like this was done against my will or something. I completely understand it. Because after the first movie, I think people knew that they liked 'Knives Out' [but] they didn't necessarily know it well enough to know who Benoit Blanc was. I think that would've gotten blank stares. And I wanted everyone who loved 'Knives Out' to know that ['Glass Onion'] is the next one of those. So I absolutely 100% was on board and totally got it that we had to do that. But also, it kills me a little bit and I want to see how quickly we can lose that subtitle."
He explained his idea moving forward:
"As soon as we can get past those and get to 'A Benoit Blanc Mystery' ... and I will say, with this one, with the reach of Netflix and just how many more people I feel like have seen it and how much more it feels like it's actually in the culture, we're at least getting closer to being able to get away with 'A Benoit Blanc Mystery' and people would know what we're talking about."
I think that with how many people have watched and loved the first two movies, this is a great way to move forward. Daniel Craig is as tied to these films as he is to his 007 flicks, and I look forward to seeing more of them get released under the Benoit Blanc Mystery banner.