Everything We Know About Knives Out 3: Cast, Title and Updates

To say Rian Johnson’s pulp mystery movie Knives Out was the surprise hit of 2019 would be a bit of an understatement: and for good reason, the film was funny, thought-provoking, and charming in all the right ways. And now, following the success of 2022’s follow-up Glass Onion, Johnson is back with Knives Out 3, titled Wake Up Dead Man, set to launch in 2025. 

In the years since the first film dropped, Knives Out has become something of an anthology series: with each movie following the master sleuth Benoit Blanc as he grapples with a new mystery. Wake Up Dead Man looks to be following on in the same vein, with Johnson confirming that Daniel Craig will be returning in the lead role.

Everything We Know About Wake Up Dead Man

Though the film is confirmed to be coming out in 2025, and we already know quite a few cast members, there is still a lot about Wake Up Dead Man that remains a mystery. How fitting. 

As it stands, we don’t know where the movie will be set, or what the general theme will be. The original Knives Out played similar to a classic game of Cluedo, with Blanc trying to figure out who killed bestselling author Harlan Thrombey. In Knives Out’s sequel, Glass Onion, Blanc was instead invited to a tech billionaire’s island to solve a cascading mystery with, you guessed it, murder at its core.

It’s fair to assume Wake Up Dead Man will riff on similar ideas, but approach the classic murder mystery from a different angle. In fact, Johnson took to Instagram while promoting Glass Onion to gush about Agatha Christie’s writing style, and how much it informed the creation of the Knives Out series.

“Something I love about Agatha Christie is how she never tread water creatively,” Johnson said. “She was constantly stretching the (murder mystery) genre conceptually. Under the umbrella of a whodunnit she wrote spy thrillers, proto-slasher horrors, serial killer hunts, gothic romances, psychological character studies, glam travelogues.

“When I made Knives Out, that’s what excited me about more mysteries with Daniel as Benoit Blanc – to emulate Christie and have every film be like a whole new book, with its own tone, ambition (and) reason for being.”

And while Netflix and Johnson have kept almost entirely quiet on what’s coming our way in 2025, fans have been devouring every morsel of information, with r/KnivesOutMovie regularly updated with behind the scenes photos.

Knives Out 3 Cast Confirmed

Those photos show off quite a few new characters, and we do have some idea of who we’ll be seeing in Wake Up Dead Man beyond Daniel Craig. Here’s everyone confirmed to be involved in the movie as of now:

• Daniel Craig
• Josh O’Connor
• Glenn Close
• Josh Brolin
• Mila Kunis
• Jeremy Renner
• Kerry Washington
• Andrew Scott
• Cailee Spaeny
• Daryl McCormack
• Thomas Haden Church

So far, all we know is that Craig is Blanc, O’Connor is a man of the cloth, Close seems to have recently been widowed, and Kunis is a police officer. While it’d be nice to know more, maybe for the sake of maintaining mystery, let’s just leave it there.

Knives Out 3 Release Window

While we don’t have an exact release date yet, we do know that Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery will be launching globally on Netflix in 2025.