As soon as Daniel Craig signed on for Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out,” other A-list actors like Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Katherine Langford and Toni Collette joined in a snowball effect — but the director says one actress was harder to cast.
“Daniel was the first to sign on — he’s the reason the movie got made,” Johnson told TheWrap. “He was a part of the reason we were able to attract everyone we did because everyone wants to work with him. Then Michael Shannon signed on, then LaKeith Stanfield, then Toni Collette — as the cast got more and more amazing, more people wanted to join, and before you know it, you have this all-star ensemble.”
He added: “The only person that was hard to get was Ana [de Armas]. I always knew that because she was the center of the movie, we’d have to go out and find someone. She’s not a newcomer, and she’s done fantastic work, but I was less familiar with her work. My casting director brought her to my attention.”
Other cast members included Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Christopher Plummer and Jaeden Martell. “Knives Out” follows a detective that investigates a death of the patriarch in an extremely eccentric family — and everyone is a suspect.
The director also said that Craig’s limited shooting availability due to “James Bond” actually helped get the other big names to sign on, because there was a sense of immediacy.
“From the day he signed on, we had six weeks to shoot,” he explained. “We had a quick window, and I think that helped with the cast because it was like, ‘Are you available right now? Can you come down to Boston right now?‘ The immediacy of it was beneficiary.”
That definitely convinced Evans, who had planned to take a break after “Avengers: Endgame” but was home in Massachusetts when the film was pitched to him. “He was a local hire,” Johnson joked.
Johnson, who also wrote the script for the whodunnit, said the most difficult thing about writing a movie for such a big ensemble of character was that he wanted to make sure everyone had ample screen time, and that no one was “shortchanged.”
“The thing with writing is that you only have so much real estate in terms of screen time, so I had to make sure all these great characters got their moment and were serviced by the script — for the audience and for myself, I didn’t want to shortchange anyone,” he explained. “This cast is so good at what they do, though, they were having so much fun, they were all dialed in, so we didn’t really have any hellish days. The days when everyone was together, those were both the most fun and most challenging, directing wise.”
The most fun character to write, he said, was Craig’s character, Benoit Blanc, because of the character’s “love for words.” So much, in fact, that he would love to do more Ben Blanc movies, if “Knives Out” does well on opening weekend.
For Johnson, writing a murder mystery was a long-gestating dream.
“I grew up loving Agatha Christie and I wanted to do a murder mystery in the whodunnit mode for a long, long time,” he said. “The genre is kind of very close to my heart, it’s like comfort food for me. I had the basic idea for this movie 10 years ago, but the biggest issue was, how do we give the audience something they haven’t seen before. My solution to that was approach it more as a story, not a puzzle, and use emotion as a misdirection.”
To successfully execute a murder mystery story, attention to even the smallest detail is crucial. While that was difficult for Johnson, he knew he had to put in the work.
“That scene where Benoit lays it all out in the library, that’s my favorite scene in the movie,” he said. “Those endings are only satisfying if every single point connects with something you recognize from earlier. It’s an incredibly satisfying feeling of that Rubik’s Cube snapping together, and knowing that all the clues were there all along, to do that, you just have to put in the work and make sure you have everything set up in such a way that the audience is going to remember. That was fun — for me, that was like doing a crossword puzzle.”
This last part is a spoiler. Do not read on if you haven’t seen the movie.
Apart from the ensemble cast, there is one other big name in the movie that you might’ve missed. Stay for the credits, and you’ll see an actor’s name that has worked with Johnson many times before.
That’s right, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is credited at the end of the movie as Detective Hardrock. But you’ll ask, who was Detective Hardrock? Was he one of the cops in the background of a scene?
“You have to have your ears peeled,” Johnson said, laughing. “He’s a detective on that cop show playing on the iPad in the kitchen. I have to have him in every movie I do — if I can’t have him on set, I will use just his voice.”
Every Rian Johnson Movie, Ranked Worst to Best (Photos)
Rian Johnson is one of the most promising filmmakers to emerge in recent decades, with an energetic storytelling style and a penchant for narratives that capture the feel of familiar genres while subverting his audience's expectations at nearly every turn. With a film career that -- so far -- almost exclusively spans the mystery and sci-fi genres, he has become one of the most intriguing contemporary pulp filmmakers we've got. But sometimes his cleverness can overwhelm his films and undermine what he seems to be trying to accomplish. So let's explore his impressively creative and eccentric filmography, and rank his films from the least effective to the most.
6. "Looper" (2012) The first half of Rian Johnson's first sci-fi film is so intricately realized that you might not even notice it doesn't make sense. "Looper" takes place in a world where assassins like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are hired to kill people who are sent back in time from the future, and are eventually expected to kill older versions of themselves. When his future self (now played by Bruce Willis) comes back, he escapes, and it's up to this reckless young man to literally destroy his own future. "Looper" is inventive and electric, cleverly combining film-noir, western, time-travel and cyberpunk genres, but the second half devolves into uninspired "Terminator" territory, and the subplot about psychic powers feels like it's from a completely different and significantly less interesting movie.
Photo credit: Sony
5. "Knives Out" (2019) Johnson assembles a superlative cast for his Agatha Christie-esque whodunnit, with Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Toni Collette and Don Johnson playing the family of a wealthy mystery novelist, played by Christopher Plummer, whose sudden, suspicious death attracts the attention of Daniel Craig's super sleuth. They've all got motives, but "Knives Out" is more interested in the victim's hired help, played by Ana de Armas, who has one hell of a secret. Johnson's whirligig direction and gleaming ensemble keep "Knives Out" engaging and kooky, but the filmmaker's efforts to give this airplane-novel narrative deeper meaning feel perfunctory. Worse, the mystery runs out of steam quickly and, despite some valiant efforts, never quite picks up again. "Knives Out" is never dull, but it doesn't have much of a point.
Photo credit: Lionsgate
4. "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi" (2017) The second film the latest "Star Wars" trilogy somehow manages to be just as bold, fresh and invigorating as "The Empire Strikes Back," while still following that movie's same basic structure. Johnson's film splits the cast up, teaches us brand-new ideas about the Force, explores the connection between fascism and capitalism, builds on the connection between the hero and the villain, and gives us one hell of a twist. It's so overstuffed with amazing set pieces and fascinating ideas that it can't help but burst a little at the seams. Not every idea is explored to fulfillment, and some of the plot points are controversial, but "The Last Jedi" dares to take a familiar franchise into exciting new directions, and effectively takes the safety off of the entire "Star Wars" mythology. As a stand-alone film it's messy, and yet it's exactly what the series needed.
Photo credit: Disney
3. "The Brothers Bloom" (2008) The con-artist sub-genre is typically a cynical one, in which nobody can be trusted and even the audience is treated like a mark. But Johnson's effervescent, romantic "The Brothers Bloom" is an entirely different kind of racket. Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play brothers who don't just trick their victims, they weave complicated fictions full of subtext and character development which leave everyone happy. Even if they just got bilked out of all their money. When their latest target turns out to be a quirky genius, played to perfection by Rachel Weisz, their story begins to unravel in unexpected ways. Crackerjack entertainment and thoughtful character-driven drama, with a villainous turn by Maximillian Schell that will make your skin crawl.
Photo credit: Summit Entertainment
2. "Brick" (2005) Johnson's debut feature is still, impressively, one of his best. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a high school iconoclast investigating the disappearance of the only girl he's ever loved, played by Emilie de Ravin. His search reveals shocking truths and fascinating characters inside all the high-school caste systems, in a narrative which successfully transforms John Hughes archetypes into a densely crafted, hard-boiled noir ensemble. "Brick" gets playful with the teen sleuth premise, and occasionally gets a guffaw for taking its gritty style too seriously, but beneath the high-concept veneer, Johnson is telling a powerful story about love, loss and loneliness. It's as potent as any neo-noir, and Johnson's trademark cleverness never gets in the way of the story's walloping gut punches.
Photo credit: Focus Features
1. "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" (2022) Daniel Craig’s southern super-sleuth Benoit Blanc returns in “Glass Onion,” another all-star whodunnit with twists upon twists and surprises aplenty. The mystery is dense and clever, but even if you do manage to get ahead of Johnson’s intricate plot, the fabulous characters, lavish locales and thrilling story will keep you entranced. Kate Hudson practically steals the movie, but everyone is uniformly great, in this tale that’s incredibly timely yet satisfyingly universal. “Glass Onion” proves that breezy can be bracing and that broad entertainment can be incredibly smart.
1 of 7
D: Where does ”Glass Onion“ fit among the filmmaker’s output?
Rian Johnson is one of the most promising filmmakers to emerge in recent decades, with an energetic storytelling style and a penchant for narratives that capture the feel of familiar genres while subverting his audience's expectations at nearly every turn. With a film career that -- so far -- almost exclusively spans the mystery and sci-fi genres, he has become one of the most intriguing contemporary pulp filmmakers we've got. But sometimes his cleverness can overwhelm his films and undermine what he seems to be trying to accomplish. So let's explore his impressively creative and eccentric filmography, and rank his films from the least effective to the most.
Photo credit: Sony
