Ah, Greece, the sparkling ocean waters, the delectable cuisine… the murder?!
It’s time for paradise to get a little less idyllic with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, the follow-up to 2019’s smash-hit Knives Out from writer-director Rian Johnson.
On Thursday, ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, Netflix dropped the first teaser trailer for the highly anticipated whodunnit.
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“The phrase I kept coming back to and talking about the first movie is, ‘It’s a roller coaster and not a crossword puzzle,'” writer-director-producer Rian Johnson told the Netflix site Tudum. “It’s a common mistake in writing whodunits, thinking that you’re making a crossword puzzle, and that the fun is that the audience is actually going to analyze all this and figure it out. I know when I’m reading or watching a whodunit, I always let go of the notion of figuring it out about a third of the way through it.”
Netflix The cast of ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’
Glass Onion returns audiences to the world of detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) as he travels to Greece to unravel a mystery involving a new cast of colorful suspects. It combines the classic whodunnit style of Agatha Christie mysteries with the playful vibe of “tropical getaway murder mystery” films like 1982’s Evil Under the Sun and 1973’s The Last of Sheila. Johnson has previously cited the latter as a major influence, and the films even share an inciting incident: a group of friends is invited to a glamorous and exotic locale to play a murder mystery game.
Benoit Blanc must contend with a rogues’ gallery of suspects, each with secrets of their own. In addition to Craig, Glass Onion stars Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, and Dave Bautista.
Unlike with the notoriously complex Thrombey-Drysdale family of the past, it’s difficult to point fingers at a preliminary culprit among Johnson’s latest crop of characters (at least from the trailer).
The lives of Hudson’s dazzling character, Norton’s cautious one, and the rest of the housemates are kept private. However, throughout the teaser clip the group seem be subtly separated into two categories: brains and brawn. Monae, Hahn, and Odom Jr.’s characters easily navigate a series of complex puzzles, while Hudson, Bautista, and Cline’s characters showcase almost every weapon found in a game of Clue. While it’s unclear which is the better trait to have in the end, one thing is for certain: Benoit Blanc’s detective skills will definitely be put to the test once again.
“I’m always fishing for something fun that Blanc can grab onto as an overwrought metaphor that he can beat to death,” Johnson previously told Tudum, explaining how he came up with the title. “This is all in plain sight from the very start. So, the idea of glass came to me, something that’s clear. I’ll be very honest: I literally got out my iPhone and searched my music library with the word glass. ‘There’s got to be some good glass songs.’ I was like, ‘Oh, is it a glass fortress? Is it a glass castle? Is it a glass man?’ The first thing that came up, because I’m a huge Beatles fan, is ‘Glass Onion.'”
Check out the teaser for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery above and new images from it below.
Netflix Daniel Craig in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’
Netflix Janelle Monáe in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’
Netflix Kate Hudson and Jessica Henwick in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’
Netflix Edward Norton in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’
Netflix David Bautista and Madelyn Cline in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will premiere in select theaters on a to-be-announced date and will release globally on Netflix on Dec. 23.
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