<em>Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery</em>: Everything We Know So Far
"O Death, won't you spare me o'er 'till another year?" cries the Southern singer in the new trailer for Rian Johnson's third Benoit Blanc movie, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Fortunately, you won't have to wait o'er 'till another year for Johnson's next whodunnit, as the movie hits Netflix streaming later in 2025.
Almost a year after Rian Johnson shared a photo of Daniel Craig's new look as Detective Benoit Blanc, there's finally more to learn about Wake Up Dead Man, the third movie in the Knives Out anthology mystery series. At Tudum 2025: The Live Event in Los Angeles, Netflix unveiled new teasers and release dates for some of its biggest original productions. Among the buzziest of the bunch was Wake Up Dead Man, which has a new—and quite ominous—teaser trailer, suggesting a darker tone than Johnson's last installments. Gone are the R-rated zingers and escapist vacation scenery of the previous two romps, at least from what we can see. This time, Wake Up Dead Man is flirting with Southern gothic atmospherics: church bells, rainstorms, and haunting blues crooning are transforming the next Knives Out mystery into a legit Appalachian-set thriller. "The impossible crime," Craig's Benoit Blanc narrates in the teaser. While standing in a church bathed in sunlight, Benoit looks up, and continues saying: "For a man of reason, this is the Holy Grail."You don't need to be a super sleuth to suss out details for the next Knives Out movie. Here's everything we know about Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
At Tudum, Netflix announced that Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery will begin streaming on Netflix on December 12, 2025. Consider it an early Christmas present.
Who Is in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery?Rian Johnson and Netflix released the full principal cast list of Wake Up Dead Man at Tudum 2025, however their characters remain undisclosed (save for Craig as Benoit Blanc, obviously). The list is replicated below:
- Daniel Craig
- Josh O’Connor
- Glenn Close
- Josh Brolin
- Mila Kunis
- Jeremy Renner
- Kerry Washington
- Andrew Scott
- Cailee Spaeny
- Daryl McCormack
- Thomas Haden Church
Throughout the making of his Knives Out films, Rian Johnson has described the casting process as like drafting a dinner party. "We’ve been very lucky with each of these movies to have gathered some of my favorite actors on the planet, and that’s absolutely the case here," Johnson told Tudum. "They’re also all lovely folks who get along, which is the dinner party aspect of it. When you’re making an ensemble movie like this, I think that’s key."
The first-look photo of Daniel Craig in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, originally shared by writer/director Rian Johnson in June 2024.
Netflix has not revealed the plot yet, so let’s try to guess who kicks the can. Might it be Andrew Scott? It's also likely a red herring, but Josh O'Connor—dressed in the black cloth of a priest—appears to be attempting violence on an unknown victim in the rain. "This was dressed as a miracle," says Benoit, "But it's just a murder. And I solve murders."
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