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Where do you start writing a murder mystery? Do you have the final act reveal pinned down before you flesh out the characters and how it all kicks off? Not, it turns out, if your Knives Out writer-director Rian Johnson...
"I avoid writing [the murder mystery part] until I can't anymore, most glibly," the filmmaker laughs in a new interview with GamesRadar+. "I don't really start at the end or the beginning; I start zoomed out. I start with the most fundamental basics; I knew I wanted to do a locked-door mystery with this one. But the bigger aspect of all that is just what makes any other movie work; who's the protagonist? What do they want? Why can't they get it? What is the movie about, and how does that serve the theme?
"You kind of build the mystery around that, because the mystery you can kind of construct like a crossword puzzle – but the basic line of what the movie is about is what's actually going to support it for an audience," Johnson concludes.
Swapping Glass Onion's sundrenched Greek island for a cloud-covered parish church in upstate New York, Wake Up Dead Man, the upcoming third installment in the Knives Out franchise, sees Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) faced with his most complicated case yet. Taking inspirations from the works of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Allan Poe, it centers on Josh O'Connor's Jud Duplenticy, a young boxer-turned-priest who's transferred to the seemingly snoozy town after a violent altercation with one of his superiors.
There, he quickly clashes with Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), whose cruel, heavy-handed ways of shepherding Our Lady of Perpetual Grace's troubled but morally questionable locals rubs Jud up the wrong way. He doesn't do well to hide his disdain, either, often trying to bring up the flaws in his practices to Wicks' faithful flock. So when Wicks winds up dead in the most head-scratching of ways, Jud immediately becomes the main suspect, forcing him to team-up with proud atheist Blanc to uncover the truth and prove his proclaimed innocence.
"I think what's so interesting about religion, generally, is that it's so easily interpreted in different ways – and can be so easily corrupted," says O'Connor. "A lot of Jud's arc was on the page from day one, and I was so thrilled to be asked to play him and to go on that journey, because I think I really recognized it.
"I felt I really recognized that turmoil and I saw a lacking of that kind of a story right now, in a time where I felt like we really need it. The beauty of Jud is that he doesn't... know, and a lot of the time he's questioning things," he continues. "Josh Brolin's character, Monsignor Wick, is much more certain about his views. There's something very interesting about playing a character who questions everything; it's a really good opening to approaching a role."
A thoughtful exploration of the perils of blind faith, the film's ensemble is made up of a whole host of complicated, often despicable supporting characters, including Glenn Close's pious zealot Martha Delacroix, Andrew Scott's misanthropic sci-fi author Lee Ross and Daryl McCormack's spoiled influencer-turned-wannabe politician Cy Draven.
"The magic of these films is that [Rian's] always tackling real-life situations, and they have that social relevancy," says McCormack. "There's plenty to just draw from in our current kind of world but I think, for me, when it comes to playing someone you might not inherently understand, you always have to find a doorway of empathy. Ultimately you have to try and not judge them and some of these characters are difficult not to judge."
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery releases in cinemas on November 26, arriving on Netflix worldwide on December 12. For more, check out our guide to all the other upcoming movies heading our way.
