‘Glass Onion’ New Images Revealed, Daniel Craig on Reinventing Themselves for the ‘Knives Out’ Sequel
The first Knives Out sequel, titled Glass Onion, is coming to Netflix later this year. Three years after the first movie came out in theaters, and a year and a half after the streaming deal was reported, the movie will have its world premiere at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, before playing in a few other festivals, including BFI London.
The marketing campaign is finally kicking in, with the movie being on the cover story of the new issue of Empire Magazine. The publication had the chance to interview Rian Johnson, writer/director of the movies, and its lead actor, Daniel Craig, as well as debut four exclusive images from Glass Onion. Craig talked about how hard it was for them to capture the magic of the first movie again, saying:
“How the fuck do we take something that caught people’s imagination and made them talk about murder mysteries, and do it again without it becoming a pastiche of itself?
I’ve spent the past 15 years of my life trying to do that in a franchise, so I’m not afraid of it. If you’ve got the right people in the room and the right talent, then you can do it. Rian’s a genius writer and doesn’t want to repeat [himself]. Neither do we want to let people down; we want audiences to enjoy the world that we created in the first one and believe in this one.”
He then added that his Southern accent is back, better than ever before:
“I went away to work with an accent coach for three or four months before we started shooting [Glass Onion]. I’d forgotten the accent and I didn’t want to do a pastiche. I wanted to make it as grounded and as anchored in reality as possible.”
Johnson revealed how Glass Onion will dive a bit deeper into Benoit Blanc’s life, though that wasn’t the most appealing part of the writing for him:
“There’s definitely more Blanc, but it’s not very interesting to me, the notion of building out Benoit’s life. Like with Poirot and Miss Marple, what’s fun is how the elements of Benoit’s character reveal themselves through his act of solving each one of these mysteries.”
Glass Onion will introduce a brand-new set of interesting characters that Benoit Blanc will study thoroughly to try to figure out who the murderer is. Edward Norton is playing tech billionaire Miles Bron. In the movie, he invites his “nearest and dearest” for a getaway on his private Greek island, where someone turns up dead. Johnson teased the following about the character:
“The species that [Miles] is derived from will be instantly recognisable to a lot of people in our era of tech billionaires.”
Since they shot during COVID, the cast had to quarantine together, so they spent a lot of their free time getting into the murder mystery genre, as Norton explained:
“We had a roof bar where we made our escape, and there were some pretty epic Saturday-night games of Mafia. Janelle would come fully-dressed in character. It was a bunch of fine actors and so, with the posturing and feints, there were some great reveals.”
The cast includes Kathryn Hahn as Claire Debella, a Connecticut governor running for Senate. As she told Empire, she is over the moon about the script:
“The script is so tight, you hear the music of it so well. Everybody had a note in that orchestra and it was fun to find those rhythms together as a group to make it sing.”
Kate Hudson plays fashionista Birdie Jay in the movie. The actress also brought up the quarantine time the cast and crew spent together, and discussed how Rian Johnson would light the party up:
“it would turn into a dance party. Rian’s moves changed the energy of the party. When Rian gets going, everybody starts partying harder.”
Leslie Odom Jr. as Lionel Toussaint, a scientist that works on Bron’s company. He told Empire the following about the new cast of characters:
“I imagine that as complicated as these relationships are, these people have history, so what keeps them coming back together? I thought a lot about the original spark of what brought them together when they were younger. There must be something in it that is joyful. As fraught as we arrive on that island in Greece at the start of this film, that’s now where we began. Love is complicated, friendships can be complicated.”
The ensemble also includes Dave Bautista as YouTube star Duke Cody, Madelyn Cline playing his younger girlfriend and channel assistant Whiskey, Jessica Henwick, who plays Birdie’s assistant Peg, and Janelle Monáe as tech entrepreneur Cassandra “Andi” Brand. Rian Johnson is very aware that he has a movie with both Janelle Monáe and Leslie Odom Jr., two of the greatest singers in Hollywood, and none of them were given any lyrics:
“I’ve probably committed the greatest crime to cinema by having both Janelle Monáe and Leslie Odom Jr in the movie and I haven’t made it a musical. I apologise!”
In the picture above, Monáe and Hahn are seen arguing with one another, something that is not surprising for the latter character, according to Johnson:
“[Claire] pisses everyone off, and is trying to thread the needle in many different ways, in terms of her public persona and what she’s willing to compromise in order to stay in office.”
The writer/director also explained the central themes, the layers if you will, of Glass Onion:
“The movie itself is not entirely about the income divide, but that definitely has a huge place in it. We’re in a moment in history where the divide feels increasingly obscene. Like a circus that we can’t keep our eyes off even as the negative effects of it become more and more real in all our lives.”
Glass Onion will debut on Netflix on December 25, and will play in theaters for a short period of time in November, after the festival circuit is done. A trailer should be coming in the next few weeks as we head into the Toronto International Film Festival. Stay tuned!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
