You’d have to search far and wide for a soul who hasn’t signed off their approval for Rian Johnson’s Benoit Blanc movies. Indeed, ever since Knives Out first knocked our socks off back in 2019, everyone seemed fully on board with watching Daniel Craig play this delightfully charismatic detective for the rest of time.
But while Craig may be the star of the show, any movie with Benoit Blanc tends to be bolstered by a cast that only gets more dreamlike with every passing feature, and Wake Up Dead Man, the upcoming third film in the series, is no exception.
Two of the biggest and earliest announcements were those of Cailee Spaeny and Josh O’Connor, who have both been triumphantly bossing the big screen lately thanks to Civil War and Challengers, respectively. It’s also no great assumption that there was a reason for the swiftness of their casting confirmation, so expect their lived-in tenacity to continue here. The presence of Thomas Haden Church and the legendary Glenn Close, meanwhile, likely promises a chemistry that will help drive the watchability of this mystery in a big way.
It’s worth mentioning that while we don’t yet know any plot details surrounding the film, Wake Up Dead Man also happens to be the name of a U2 song. That, plus the fact that both Andrew Scott and Daryl McCormack are amongst the cast, very safely suggests that Benoit Blanc is heading to Ireland this time around (although, at the moment, principal photography is underway in London). Rounding out the call sheet is a delectably magnetic duo in Kerry Washington and Josh Brolin, along with Mila Kunis and Jeremy Renner, both of whom have proven to be particularly bold casting strategies given the controversies surrounding them.
Now, let’s get something straight; it is a fruitless endeavor to try and figure out what a Benoit Blanc mystery is going to entail ahead of time, and not even knowledge of the cast is uch help. It is worth noting, however, that Johnson has promised a movie that’s both tonally and thematically different from Knives Out and Glass Onion, and given the relatively lighthearted essence of those two films, the easiest conclusion is that we’re in for a darker Blanc caper than we’ve come to expect. In this way, this particular cast—the bulk of whom skew softer than bombastic in terms of screen presence—makes a lot of sense.
But then again, the fact that that’s the easiest conclusion makes us suspect that those tonal/cerebral shifts themselves will manifest as something else entirely, so there’s really no telling what Johnson’s strategy with this specific roster is at the moment. Whatever the case may be, the Benoit Blanc films have continued going from strength to strength in terms of securing a cast and so whatever Close, O’Connor, and the rest of Johnson’s latest inductees into this charming mythos have in store for us, we’re ready to eat it right up.
Wake Up Dead Man is scheduled to release on Netflix at some point in 2025.
