Wake up, release date. At Netflix Tudum 2025: The Live Event, the streamer announced that writer and director Rian Johnson’s third installment in the “Knives Out” series will debut on Friday, December 12. Johnson also previewed footage from “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” which sees Daniel Craig returning as Benoit Blanc alongside Jeremy Renner, Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Mila Kunis, Thomas Haden Church, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, Josh O’Connor and Daryl McCormack.
“This is the third Benoit Blanc movie that we’ve made. And one thing that we try and do — that we strive to do with each one of them — is to keep the audience guessing,” Johnson said at the event. “It’s really important for us to figure out new ways every time, so that just when you think you have it figured out, a new twist comes along that you weren’t expecting. And that’s what makes these movies special.”
Johnson has been a longtime advocate of theatrical releases, and the original “Knives Out” film, distributed by Lionsgate, was a sleeper hit in 2019, grossing over $300 million worldwide. Its sequel “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” however, was picked up by Netflix and only given a limited, 696-screen release — grossing $15 million in just one week — before moving exclusively to Netflix on Dec. 23, 2022.
Johnson told Business Insider earlier this month that he didn’t think theatrical releases were going anywhere.
“We’ve seen, if you put a movie people want to see in the theaters, they are going to show up for it, and that experience of being in a full house and having that experience is so important,” Johnson said. “It’s something that I love and I want more of in the world.”
But Netflix has had a cagey relationship with theaters. Last September, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at the Royal Television Society’s London Convention that theatrical releases are a “fairly insufficient way to distribute some movies,” according to THR.
Benoit Blanc himself previously stated he hoped “Wake Up Dead Man” would stay in theaters longer than its processor.
“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,” Craig said.
The cryptic sneak preview, stayed true to the tease Johnson posted a year ago, when he celebrated the “malleable” nature of the whodunit.
“There’s a whole tonal spectrum from Carr to Christie, and getting to explore that range is one of the most exciting things about making Benoit Blanc movies,” he wrote.
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” debuts on Friday, December 12. Watch the sneak preview below.
