LOS ANGELES — Daniel Craig returns as gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc in “Wake Up Dead Man,” writer-director Rian Johnson’s third “Knives Out” mystery, which debuted in theaters Nov. 26 and began streaming on Netflix Dec. 12, 2025. Johnson pushes Blanc into a darker, faith-soaked case built around a small-town church and a crime that seems to defy logic, Dec. 20, 2025.
Wake Up Dead Man takes Benoit Blanc into a church mystery
The setup is lean and instantly legible: Blanc is drawn into a religious community where appearances, loyalties and doctrine blur into motive. On Netflix’s official page for “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” the streamer describes the film as pairing Blanc with an earnest young priest to investigate “a perfectly impossible crime” tied to a church with a dark history — a premise that signals a tonal shift from the franchise’s earlier, brighter satire.
That tonal pivot doesn’t mean abandoning the formula that made “Knives Out” a hit: a new circle of suspects, sharp comic timing and a mystery built to be argued about after the credits. “Wake Up Dead Man” surrounds Craig with an ensemble that includes Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott and Cailee Spaeny. Johnson, in Netflix Tudum’s cast and plot rundown, likens his casting style to “throwing a dinner party,” adding that he has been “very lucky” to gather some of his favorite actors for each film.
“Wake Up Dead Man” also arrived with a festival sheen. The film’s early public spotlight came at Toronto International Film Festival, where the series’ mix of crowd-pleasing puzzle and star-driven spectacle played to the room, according to an AP report from the premiere. It’s the kind of launch that fits the franchise’s identity: mainstream entertainment with just enough edge to feel like more than a cozy rehash.
Off-screen, O’Connor’s experience hints at how Johnson built a more physically punishing atmosphere around the faith-and-fear framing. In an Entertainment Weekly interview, O’Connor said the production’s rain machines made him feel “punked,” joking that it “always seemed to be raining on me and never on Daniel Craig.”
The franchise’s path to this point was set years ago, when Netflix made its move to turn Johnson’s whodunit into a streaming tentpole. In 2021, The Verge’s report on Netflix buying two sequels underscored how the streamer planned to build a recurring movie brand around Blanc — and how the series would become a test case for balancing theaters with home viewing.
That balance has been part of the conversation since “Glass Onion.” In a 2022 Vanity Fair “Notes on a Scene” interview, Johnson said he wanted each Benoit Blanc entry to be “totally new” in look and feel — a philosophy that made “Glass Onion” a deliberate contrast to the original. “Wake Up Dead Man” follows that same playbook, swapping sunlit glamour for a moodier moral maze that uses faith as fuel for suspicion rather than window dressing.
