In 2019, writer and director Rian Johnson’s Knives Out spun a modern flair on the classic whodunit with an ensemble cast of stars, including Daniel Craig as the distinguished southern Detective Benoit Blanc. Now, Johnson returns to the universe that earned the filmmaker an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, introducing a whole new stacked cast of suspects when tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) invites his wealthy friends to his Greek island for a puzzling competition.

Blanc is back, and when someone on the island winds up truly dead the New Money crew are forced to forfeit their fun. Alongside Craig and Norton, Glass Onion features Kate Hudson as superstar model Birdie Jay, Kathryn Hahn as politician and hopeful-governor Claire Debella, as well as Dave Bautista as Twitch streamer Duke Cody, Leslie Odom Jr. as the engineer Lionel Toussaint, and Janelle Monáe as Bron’s former business partner Andi Brand. Also attending the revelry are Madelyn Cline as Whiskey, Duke Cody’s girlfriend, and Jessica Henwick as Peg, Birdie’s devoted assistant.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY
Ahead of Glass Onion’s premiere on Netflix, Collider’s Steve Weintraub was able to sit down with director Johnson. During his interview, Johnson shares where the inspiration for his sequel came from and which was the most challenging sequence from his filmography to shoot. He also reveals how Glass Onion was almost a completely different narrative and what to expect from the next film in the franchise. You can watch the interview in the video above, or read the full transcript below.

COLLIDER: So, listen, I want to start with congratulations on the sequel. You did an amazing job with it.

RIAN JOHNSON: Thanks, man.

Image via Netflix

Because the first film was so successful and Netflix paid for two sequels, and they paid a lot of money, did you feel a little pressure or more pressure making the sequel, like, “This really has to be a good movie”?

JOHNSON: I mean, yeah, but no more pressure than you always feel when you do something new, like, “This has to be a good movie,” I think. I hope that’s always there. I mean, I wrote the thing before we made the Netflix deal, so I didn’t know who we were making it with when I wrote it, so that didn’t come into play. But, yeah, I don’t know. I think it was, to me, the fact that the mode of doing another one, as opposed to trying to build off of or top the first one, it was about looking back to how Agatha Christie did her novels, where each one was completely different, and it had its own reason for being. I think that let me just approach this one as its own movie with its own goals and its own everything. So I think maybe that helped take some of the pressure off. But, yeah, I did definitely feel it a little bit.

With all the films you’ve made, which shot or sequence ended up being the most challenging to pull off, whether it be camera moves, whether it be the dialogue and the camera move?

JOHNSON: Real pain in the butt. I mean, we’ve had difficult shots before, but in terms of scenes, I mean, I feel like maybe this isn’t the most difficult, but in the first Knives Out there’s a sequence that starts the movie in the library where Blanc’s questioning all of the suspects, and it’s a very complicated scene where there’s lots of intercutting of the different questioning. And you’re setting up every character, trying to get a lot of information clear. And I think that sequence, whatever it was, 8, 10 minutes, we recut over and over for the length of the editing process up until the very end. It was the last thing we were working on, still trying to trim it down. So, any time you have a complicated sequence like that, that’s something you always dig into.

Image via Netflix

When you came up with the idea for Glass Onion, how much did you debate, “This is the idea I want to go with”? Because, obviously, you’re making another one after this, but how did you know, “This was the one I wanted for the next movie”? And did you almost do something else?

JOHNSON: There were a couple of things I was kind of entertaining. One of them was a bigger, more meta, even more meta, wacky idea, which I won’t pitch in case I want to use it down the line, I don’t want to spoil it.

But no, I don’t know. That is one thing that could be a potential trap of these especially, thinking like, “Oh my God, how do I top the last one?” I think you could probably get in a cycle of thinking, of rejecting each idea as not good enough because no idea is good enough until you start working on it, I think. So I kind of just picked a horse early on and was like, “Okay, it’ll be this.” And you start going down the path and sculpting it, and then it turns into the thing and it becomes what it is.

The reaction to this film has been very strong. And I’m curious, as a filmmaker, I think you’ve said that you want to go into making another Knives Out as your next film, does it energize you when you have this kind of reaction? And part two to this is, do you already have the idea for the next one?

JOHNSON: It energizes. It also is, like your previous question, it’s scary also because when you’re making something, it’s like a ball of mud that you’re forming. You’ve got your hands in it, it’s personal, it’s your thing. And then the instant you put it out there, especially if people like it, it suddenly becomes this, and we sit here and do these interviews about it and talk about it. It suddenly becomes this thing outside of yourself that’s this kind of gilded thing and you kind of forget how you made it. So it makes it a little scarier, actually, but in a good way, I mean, to do the next one.

I don’t have the idea for the next one. I’m starting right now to think. And the big thing for me is just how can it be totally different, not just from the first one, but also from Glass Onion?

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix. For more, check out Collider’s interview with stars Kathryn Hahn and Kate Hudson below: