Rian Johnson wants to keep directing his hit crime caper franchise Knives Out, despite his two picture deal with Netflix coming to an end with the completion to the third instalment, Wake Up Dead Man.
“I don’t feel burnt out doing these at all. If anything I feel energized after doing this one,” he said during a talk at the BFI London Film Festival on Thursday. “So as long as audiences want to keep seeing it, and Daniel and I are still having fun making them and still feel like we can come up with stuff that feels not just fresh, but a fresh challenge for us, I think that’ll translate to a new experience for the audience.”
He added: “For now, I’d be thrilled to keep making these for the rest of my life.”
“Wake Up Dead Man.” in which Blanc investigates the mysterious death of Brolin’s firebrand priest alongside O’Connor as his fellow clergyman (and prime suspect), has more darkly gothic tones that the previous two “Knives Out” films. But Johnson suggested the setting perhaps made it the funniest of the three.
“In a way it a much more ground and sombre movie,” he said. “But I still think it’s very funny, and maybe even a little more so than the others, because you’re not supposed to fart in church. Because of the seriousness of it, it makes the funny stuff a little more contrast.”
Wake Up Dead Man opened the 2025 edition of the London Film Festival earlier this week.
Image: Getty Images for BFI
