Daniel Craig’s background in major franchises, including the James Bond films, prepared him to handle the high stakes and high expectations of filming a Knives Out sequel. Craig told Empire that making Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery live up to the standards set by the original was difficult since he had to avoid making the film “a caricature of itself.”
Craig portrays the slick-talking Southern investigator Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out movie directed by the maestro of subversion Rian Johnson. The first movie is often cited as the one that got people interested in classic whodunits again.
Johnson’s script, which was nominated for an Oscar, breathed new life into the predictable genre with its biting social satire. This is all to imply that many have extremely high hopes for the follow-up. Craig knows this better than others because he was the star of a James Bond run that had its ups and downs. To quote him directly: I’m not scared of failure because I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life trying to do it in a franchise setting. With the proper team and the correct skill set, everything is possible. Rian is a brilliant writer who doesn’t like to write the same thing twice. We don’t want to disappoint anyone, and we want people to believe in the universe we’ve built for this film just as much as they believed in the first.
A fresh still from the film, featuring Craig in his signature middle-distance-staring attitude, was also unveiled by Empire. Despite the fact that the still doesn’t disclose much about the film’s narrative or locale, it will hopefully reassure viewers that the sequel maintains the high standards set by the previous film’s fashion. Blanc’s shirt stands out against Craig’s baby blues, but his tie might easily be overlooked by Elio from “Call Me By Your Name.”
Like Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig has mostly devoted his career to a few ongoing franchises.
The last films he made that weren’t part of a series were Logan Lucky and Kings, both of which came out five years ago. Both The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Adventures of Tintin was planned to have sequels that ultimately didn’t come to fruition for a variety of reasons, but had they done so, Craig would have had two extra series to handle. Over the course of 15 years and five films (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die), Daniel Craig portrayed James Bond.
No Time to Die, the last instalment, was released late last year and met with universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike, becoming a major financial success with a worldwide total of $774 million on an estimated budget of around $250 million. The first Knives Out was a massive financial success, earning over $300 million on a projected $40 million budget. Netflix, seeing the potential in the film’s popularity, paid roughly half a billion dollars to acquire the rights to make two further instalments. Glass Onion has an all-star cast including Dave Bautista, Madelyn Cline, Kathryn Hahn, Jessica Henwick, Kate Hudson, Janelle Monáe, and Leslie Odom Jr. The film’s world premiere will take place at TIFF in September, followed by appearances at the London Film Festival and the Netflix premiere on December 23.