Knives Out 3, officially titled Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, continues casting apace. On top of recent additions Andrew Scott, Josh O’Connor, and Cailee Spaeny, Glenn Close has joined the cast—will she play a patrician matriarch or a kook?—as have Jeremy Renner and Mila Kunis. These two roles were rumored to have Tom Hardy and Lindsay Lohan lined up, but either that was never true (entirely possible) or it didn’t pan out. I have…a really hard time picturing Rian Johnson getting along with Tom Hardy.
For Renner, though, this is his first film role since his snowplow accident last year (he started filming season 3 of the Paramount series Mayor of Kingstown earlier this year). It also brings home the joke in Glass Onion about Jeremy Renner’s small-batch hot sauce. Do you think that will still be a thing in Dead Man? Will Jeremy Renner eat Jeremy Renner’s small-batch hot sauce? Or will Rian Johnson avoid the obvious joke? I can’t decide if referencing it is funnier than not referencing it.
I also remain terribly curious about the setting of this film. Fun little murder mysteries are always good for an exotic locale! Vulture’s Jason Frank suggested it should be set at a gay club, to let Benoit Blanc get down before the murdering begins. That’s a legit good idea, set the action in a luxurious club, let us see more of Benoit’s off-duty hours. Will Hugh Grant return? Will we see more of Philip’s interesting apron collection? There are so many questions to be answered!
In other casting news, Mahershala Ali is joining the new Jurassic World movie with Scarlett Johansson, Rupert Friend, and Jonathan Bailey. I assume that means Blade is getting pushed back to 2026. And Chris Hemsworth is going to front that cursed Transformers/GI Joe crossover movie Paramount keeps threatening us with. That is probably not going to pan out the way Chris hopes it will.
