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When Rian Johnson made Knives Out the movie was such a hit that it spawned not one but two additional sequels, transforming the single mystery into a bona fide franchise. Now two of the films have been released, and the sequel, Glass Onion, was just as big a hit as the first. However, Johnson now says there is one big thing that he hopes will make the third film in the series very different. He wants to change the subtitle.
The full title of the second movie, at least from a promotional standpoint was Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which doesn’t actually make a lot of sense, since the two films have completely separate stories and characters, with only Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc appearing in both. While Johnson understands the need to include the Knives Out name the second time around, he tells the Filmcast that he hopes that the third movie will drop Knives Out and become A Benoit Blanc mystery. Johnson said…
The thing is, though, I totally get it. It’s not like this was done against my will or something. I completely understand it. Because after the first movie, I think people knew that they liked ‘Knives Out’ [but] they didn’t necessarily know it well enough to know who Benoit Blanc was. I think that would’ve gotten blank stares. And I wanted everyone who loved ‘Knives Out’ to know that [‘Glass Onion’] is the next one of those. So I absolutely 100% was on board and totally got it that we had to do that.
As Johnson says, it makes sense that Netflix would want to include Knives Out in the title of Glass Onion because the name of the movie has more name recognition with the general public that the character played by Daniel Craig, Benoit Blanc. You want the people looking for the Knives Out sequel to know that Glass Onion is the Knives Out sequel. The movie had been generally referred to as Knives Out 2 before it had an official title because nobody knew what else to call it.
Having said that, the only connection between the two movies is the character. The idea of calling the entire movie franchise Knives Out doesn’t really make any sense. Both stories are murder mystery whodunits, but they are otherwise very original in how they go about that, with each one finding different ways to subvert the genre.
But Rian Johnson is hopeful that when it comes to the third movie in this series, it won’t be called A Knives Out Mystery. Instead, thanks to the fact that a lot more people have been introduced to Benoit Blanc and know his name, the writer/director hopes that will be the subtitle used to let people know what the next film in the series is. Johnson continues…
But also, it kills me a little bit and I want to see how quickly we can lose that subtitle. As soon as we can get past those and get to ‘A Benoit Blanc Mystery’ … and I will say, with this one, with the reach of Netflix and just how many more people I feel like have seen it and how much more it feels like it’s actually in the culture, we’re at least getting closer to being able to get away with ‘A Benoit Blanc Mystery’ and people would know what we’re talking about.
We likely won’t know for sure what subtitle the next Benoit Blanc movie has until promotion for the movie begins. By then, the first two movies will likely have continued to find new fans, so it feels like there’s a good chance everybody will know who Benoit Blanc is.