Knives Out director Rian Johnson revealed Daniel Craig almost didn’t play the detective Benoit Blanc in the film series because he was filming another iconic character at the time.
In a new interview, Johnson talked about the third Knives Out film which sees Craig reprise his role as the Southern detective.
“When we were first trying to get Knives Out made, Daniel wasn’t available. He was doing the Bond movies. He was my first choice for it but he was a hard ‘not available’ because he was on the Bond movies,” Johnson told IndieWire.
“So, we went to other people for it. We got a bunch of ‘no’s about Benoit Blanc,” the filmmaker added, declining to share the names of actors who turned down the role.
“I’ll reiterate that the instant there was some delay with the Bond movie and Daniel had a window, the instant he became available, I leapt. Thank God. Thank God Daniel got it,” Johnson continued.
“And the moment Daniel read the script and said yes, it was six weeks until we were shooting. So the whole movie was put together really, really quickly. Which, actually, with casting helps. It’s not, can you save us a slot six months from now? And then maybe they get a Marvel movie, or something. It is, can you come to Boston next week?”
The first Knives Out film, released in 2019, starred an ensemble cast of Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas in her breakout role. Made on a budget of about £30m, the film made nearly £240m at the box office.
After the success of the first film under Lionsgate, Johnson sold the rights to two sequels to Netflix in a £345m deal.
Johnson, who also directed the Peacock series Poker Face and the 2017 Star Wars film The Last Jedi, said he would continue making Knives Out movies as long as both he and Craig enjoyed doing it.
“For me, personally, these movies are working with Daniel. It’s a partnership. The instant either one of us feels even slightly like not doing it, we’ll stop doing it,” the director said. “We’re in the boat together in this thing. I think the pressure we both put on ourselves is trying to do right by the other one. And that’s a really good partnership. If Daniel is happy, I’m happy.”
The third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and earned rave reviews. It follows Blanc investigating a murder case at a local church, and incorporates themes of religion and the macabre, departing from the Agatha Christie style of the first two movies to embrace a darker mystery resembling Edgar Allen Poe’s work.
Craig is supported by new additions to the cast. Josh O’Connor plays the young priest Jud Duplenticy, Josh Brolin is the monsignor and Glenn Close a parishioner.
Johnson himself called Wake Up Dead Man Benoit Blanc’s “most personal journey yet”.
“He’s forced to engage with the case – and with himself – in a way that is completely new,” the Breaking Bad director said in an interview with Netflix’s Tudum. “It’s more similar to the first Knives Out in that it gets back to the real origins of the genre, which predate Agatha Christie, going back to Edgar Allan Poe. It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, so it’s funny and fun, but it’s set in an old stone church, there are lots of graveyards.”
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