Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc is soon set to solve another murder in Knives Out 3, AKA Wake Up Dead Man, and we can hardly wait. It's been three years since we last saw the sharply dressed super sleuth in Glass Onion, in which he was invited to an island getaway by tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) – and wound up trying to get to the bottom of an assassination attempt gone wrong.
Now, he's swapping Greece for upstate New York, as Blanc descends on Hudson Valley, near Sleepy Hollow, for "his most dangerous case yet." As we've come to expect from the Rian Johnson-directed whodunnits, the third installment is bursting with stars, all of whom could be playing the killer our cravat-wearing private investigator is trying to sniff out. From Challengers' Josh O'Connor to Marvel stars Josh Brolin and Jeremy Renner, the cast list of the upcoming movie is stacked... and there's plenty more where that came from, too, which we dive into below.
We've compiled everything else you need to know about the sequel, too, including its (staggered) theatrical and streaming release dates, suspected plot, and teaser. So if it makes no damn sense, but you feel compelled to figure out what Wake Up Dead Man has in store for us, simply scroll on...
Knives Out 3 release date
With filming having wrapped in August 2024, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Story is currently scheduled to land on Netflix globally on December 12, 2025. It'll have its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on September 7.
According to Tudum, the movie will be shown in select theaters in November, just like its predecessor Glass Onion did before it hit streaming – though details beyond that have yet to be revealed.
We'll be sure to keep you posted, in case you'd rather catch the new installment on the big screen. But, while we wait, you can also head over to our Glass Onion review if you want to be caught up on the franchise ahead of time.
Knives Out 3 trailer
We've only seen a teaser for Wake Up Dead Man so far, which is pretty surprising given it's coming out very soon. The promo, which you can watch above, was centered around the release date announcement, too, which means it only really offers up... vibes.
The clip opens with a skull ominously floating on some sort of green liquid, as Ralph Stanley's 'O Death' plays out in the background. "The impossible crime," Benoit Blanc can then be heard saying via voiceover. "For a man of reason, this is the Holy Grail. This was dressed as a miracle, but it's just a murder and I solve murders."
Knives Out 3 cast
It was clear from the very beginning that Daniel Craig would be back as Benoit Blanc, acting as the blue-eyed glue that holds each title together. But since Knives Out 3 was first announced, fans of the franchise had been itching to see who'd face off against the former James Bond star.
Josh O'Connor, Cailee Spaeny, and Andrew Scott were among the first to be announced, before Mila Kunis and Jeremy Runner joined the ranks. We were tickled pink by the news of Renner's involvement at the time, considering a particular condiment-related gag in 2022's Glass Onion. "Oh, that's Jeremy Renner's small-batch hot sauce," Norton's Miles tells Benoit in the film, after a bite of a fiery canape has him spluttering. "I let him invest. He sends me, like, a pallet every year. Take a few bottles." Bottles with the Hawkeye actor's face on, no less...
"Jeremy's a great actor who I've wanted to work with for a long time," Johnson told Tudum earlier this month. "I was very relieved he thought the hot sauce thing was funny! He's playing a proper part in this one; we'll keep the sauce offscreen. Maybe we'll sneak a few bottles onto the catering table."
Check out the full cast list below:
- Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc
- Josh O'Connor as Rev. Jud Duplenticy, a priest
- Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix
- Josh Brolin as Msgr. Jefferson Wicks, a priest
- Mila Kunis as Geraldine Scott, a police chief
- Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat Sharp
- Kerry Washington as Vera Draven
- Andrew Scott as Lee Ross
- Cailee Spaeny as Simone Vivane
- Daryl McCormack as Cy Draven
- Thomas Haden Church as Samson Holt
"Rian is a very rare breed. You just don't get filmmakers like him anymore," star Cailee Spaeny told Total Film back in 2024. "The intelligence… the equal parts intelligence, and saying something, and also pure entertainment, and a director who really feels old-school in the way they speak the language of a director. Everything in him, he's just made to do this," she continued.
"We're already in prep, and it's all happening. And I just went over there today. Everyone seems in good spirits. I haven't met the rest of the cast, but I'm terrified and also ecstatic to work with this group of people, because it's top-notch. It's the crème de la crème of acting. So I feel very honored to be part of it, and I hope that I do a good job!"
Knives Out 3 plot
Despite being only three months away from Wake Up Dead Man's limited theatrical release, we still don't know all that much about it. We do know, however, that Josh O'Connor's Father Jud will follow in Ana De Armas' Marta and Janelle Monae's Andi's footsteps, teaming up with Blanc to catch the killer this time around – and that it was based on everything from Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe to BBC series Father Brown and Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin.
Another source of inspiration, says Johnson, was the works of novelist John Dickson Carr, who "specialized in impossible crime stories, little logic puzzles." In a new interview with Empire magazine, Johnson explained: "The locked-door mystery is one of them -- somebody is found dead in a room that's locked, with no entrances or exits. It's impossible." Might that be a big clue as to how the victim in Wake Up Dead Man meets their end?
The one-and-only teaser features plenty of religious imagery, too, which ties in with writer-director Johnson previously describing it as "Gothic" and "much more grounded" than Glass Onion. So even if we don't know the detailed ins and outs of the story, we have an inkling of its style.
"I love everything about whodunnits, but one of the things I love most is how malleable the genre is," Johnson once posted on X. "There's a whole tonal spectrum from Carr to Christie, and getting to explore that range is one of the most exciting things about making Benoit Blanc movies."
For more, check out our latest breakdown of the best Netflix movies for some watchlist inspiration.
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