Knives Out 3 is only a couple of months away now, and we can't wait to see Benoit Blanc solving a new murder case. The new Knives Out movie, officially titled Wake Up Dead Man, has a star-studded cast led by Daniel Craig's charismatic detective, and it's heading to theaters (briefly) and Netflix just in time for the Christmas season.
Three years after Glass Onion, the action is moving from Greece to upstate New York, as a seemingly impossible murder has just taken place in a small congregation of a Catholic church. Who is the killer? What are their motives? Ah, we do love a whodunit. Rian Johnson is back in the director's chair, leading a long list of stars including Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Josh O'Connor, Cailee Spaeny and more.
Below, you'll find everything you need to know about Knives Out 3 release date, complete cast list, plot details, trailer, and more. Benoit Blanc's "most dangerous case yet" (and one of our most-anticipated upcoming movies) is upon us, so don't miss any important details ahead of its release.
Knives Out 3 release date
With filming having wrapped in August 2024, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is currently scheduled to land on Netflix globally on December 12, 2025. The threequel had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on September 7.
The movie will be shown in select theaters from November 26 – though it'll only be available for two weeks. Not bad, really, given that it's predecessor was around for just seven days.
While we wait, you can also head over to our Glass Onion review if you want to be caught up on the franchise ahead of time.
Knives Out 3 trailer
The first Knives Out 3 trailer dropped in September 2025, shortly after the movie's world premiere at TIFF. The clip, which you can watch above, gives us our best look yet at the movie, including who the murder victim is this time around. That would be Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, played by Josh Brolin, a priest who's found dead in the middle of a sermon after entering a sealed concrete box – alone...
Josh O'Connor plays a less senior member of the clergy, and it looks like he's teaming up with Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc to help solve the seemingly unsolvable case.
Knives Out 3 cast
It was clear from the very beginning that Daniel Craig would be back as Benoit Blanc, acting as the blue-eyed glue that holds each title together. But since Knives Out 3 was first announced, fans of the franchise had been itching to see who'd face off against the former James Bond star.
Josh O'Connor, Cailee Spaeny, and Andrew Scott were among the first to be announced, before Mila Kunis and Jeremy Runner joined the ranks. We were tickled pink by the news of Renner's involvement at the time, considering a particular condiment-related gag in 2022's Glass Onion. "Oh, that's Jeremy Renner's small-batch hot sauce," Norton's Miles tells Benoit in the film, after a bite of a fiery canape has him spluttering. "I let him invest. He sends me, like, a pallet every year. Take a few bottles." Bottles with the Hawkeye actor's face on, no less...
"Jeremy's a great actor who I've wanted to work with for a long time," Johnson told Tudum earlier this month. "I was very relieved he thought the hot sauce thing was funny! He's playing a proper part in this one; we'll keep the sauce offscreen. Maybe we'll sneak a few bottles onto the catering table."
Check out the full cast list below:
- Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc
- Josh O'Connor as Rev. Jud Duplenticy, a priest
- Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix
- Josh Brolin as Msgr. Jefferson Wicks, a priest
- Mila Kunis as Geraldine Scott, a police chief
- Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat Sharp
- Kerry Washington as Vera Draven
- Andrew Scott as Lee Ross
- Cailee Spaeny as Simone Vivane
- Daryl McCormack as Cy Draven
- Thomas Haden Church as Samson Holt
"Rian is a very rare breed. You just don't get filmmakers like him anymore," star Cailee Spaeny told Total Film back in 2024. "The intelligence… the equal parts intelligence, and saying something, and also pure entertainment, and a director who really feels old-school in the way they speak the language of a director. Everything in him, he's just made to do this," she continued.
"We're already in prep, and it's all happening. And I just went over there today. Everyone seems in good spirits. I haven't met the rest of the cast, but I'm terrified and also ecstatic to work with this group of people, because it's top-notch. It's the crème de la crème of acting. So I feel very honored to be part of it, and I hope that I do a good job!"
Knives Out 3 plot
Thanks to the release of the first Wake Up Dead Man trailer, we now know more than ever about the new Knives Out movie. For starters, O'Connor's Father Jud will follow in Ana de Armas' Marta and Janelle Monae's Andi's footsteps, teaming up with Blanc to catch the killer this time around – and that it was based on everything from Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe to BBC series Father Brown and Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin.
The trailer also revealed that Josh Brolin's character, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, is the murder victim. As for the suspects, they're as follows: Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), devout Catholic and Wicks' "right-hand woman," local doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), uptight lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), best-selling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), former concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), aspiring politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), and groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church).
Another source of inspiration for the movie, says Johnson, was the works of novelist John Dickson Carr, who "specialized in impossible crime stories, little logic puzzles." In a new interview with Empire magazine, Johnson explained: "The locked-door mystery is one of them – somebody is found dead in a room that's locked, with no entrances or exits. It's impossible." Might that be a big clue as to how the victim in Wake Up Dead Man meets their end?
"I love everything about whodunnits, but one of the things I love most is how malleable the genre is," Johnson once posted on X. "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."
For more, check out our latest breakdown of the best Netflix movies for some watchlist inspiration.
