A date has been set for Netflix to revisit Rian Johnson’s Knives Out universe. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will premiere on Netflix on December 23, after a release in a few cinemas on a later date, the streaming service said on Monday.
Daniel Craig plays investigator Benoit Blanc in the movie, which also has a release date announced by Netflix. This time, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, and Madelyn Cline with Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista play new characters as Blanc travels to Greece and gets entangled in a mystery.
The 2019 movie’s sequel is written and directed by Johnson, who was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay. Along with Ram Bergman, he produces under the T-Street label. These specifics will be announced at a later time, but according to Netflix, Glass Onion will have a limited theatrical distribution in a few theatres. The Toronto Film Festival had already been confirmed as the movie’s world premiere.
Johnson explains the meaning behind the movie’s title, a nod to the Beatles song of the same name, in a post on Netflix’s Tulum website on Monday.
Johnson stated, “I’m constantly looking for anything amusing that Blanc can latch onto as an overused metaphor that he can beat to death. Everything about this is obvious from the first. I thus had the thought of something transparent, like glass. I’ll tell you the truth. I really took out my iPhone and looked for the term “glass” in my music collection. There must be some great tunes about glass. Oh, is that a glass fortress, I thought. Is it built of glass? Is he made of glass? I immediately thought of “Glass Onion” because I am a major Beatles fan.
Lionsgate’s theatrical release of the first Knives Out was a surprising success; it was one of the few original films to succeed in an IP-heavy industry. Surprisingly, Netflix last year purchased the two Knives Out sequels in a $469 million megadeal that could have netted Johnson, producer Bergman, and actor Craig $100 million apiece, according to insiders who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter at the time.