At the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the upcoming whodunit Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery premiered to raucous applause and reviews, and it was recently revealed that director Rian Johnson had a novel way of getting the actors in the right frame of mind when the cameras were rolling. During the festival debut, Entertainment Weekly reports that cast member Janelle Monáe mentioned that Johnson would host real-life murder mystery parties for the cast on the weekends. We had a great time together,” Monáe stated of the cast. In the middle of filming a murder mystery, the cast and crew would get together for weekly murder mystery parties, with Rian sending out handwritten invitations each week. Unfortunately, neither the nature of these games nor the identities of those who participated, if any, remain unknown.
Monáe, on the other hand, took the opportunity to gush over her co-stars and Johnson, saying that it was a “life-gasm being able to bond with everybody” and that “this is what it’s about; the human experience. It’s really the people you have these experiences with that make them so fulfilling and rich.” The cast of Glass Onion might be the best individuals ever to host a murder mystery party with. Glass Onion is the follow-up to Johnson’s critically acclaimed 2019 film Knives Out, and similarly centres on a huge ensemble cast tasked with investigating a mystery. Daniel Craig, the sole member of the original cast to reprise their role, is listed first on the call sheet.
After a patriarch is discovered dead in his Massachusetts estate, Craig reprises his role as Benoit Blanc, the ambitious detective with the heavy southern accent who helped piece together the puzzle in Knives Out. Glass Onion features an impressive ensemble cast, featuring not just Craig and Monáe but also Edward Norton, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Dave Bautista, Kate Hudson, and Ethan Hawke. A tech mogul, a scientist, a fashion designer, and a governor are just some of the roles that these actors will take on. The action of Glass Onion moves from the East Coast to a private island in Greece, where Blanc and a big group of guests are taken onboard a huge yacht for a murder mystery party.
Despite the fact that all of the participants have been invited onboard the boat, Blanc is concerned that, like in the original film, there may be a more nefarious agenda at play. When a body comes up, confirming Blanc’s worst fears, he is forced back into detective mode. Each character is shown to have their own set of secrets as the film develops. Johnson claims that the tone and scope of Glass Onion are distinct from its predecessors and that this is due in large part to the film’s relocation outside of the United States. The director, who is also known for directing Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), told Entertainment Weekly that the film “had a very different narrative gambit to it in that it was trying something different and unique, and tonally, I was going to go where the characters led me,” which, given the characters in the movie, ended up in a slightly bigger place.
A contract for a third instalment in the series has already been made, and Netflix plans to release the picture on its streaming service this holiday season. This was a small aspect of the company’s overall strategy to obtain ownership of the land. Despite this, nothing concrete about the movie’s plot has been shared. A Knives Out Mystery, Glass Onion will be available on Netflix on December 23.