Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is the third installment of the Knives Out franchise. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2025 and was released in select theaters on November 26, 2025. It was released on Netflix on December 12, 2025.
Premise[]
A baffling death inside a quiet church draws Benoit Blanc into a tense investigation where faith secrets and suspicion blur as a close community turns against itself.
Production[]
Casting[]
Daniel Craig signaled his enthusiasm for reprising the role of Benoit Blanc early in the film’s development and was first to sign on. In May 2024, the ensemble cast expanded significantly with the addition of Josh O’Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, and Daryl McCormack. Finally, Josh Brolin and Thomas Haden Church joined the cast in 2024.[1]
Filming[]
Most of the film was shot in England, including church exteriors standing in for New York state, additional location filming was completed in September 2024 in Cold Spring, New York, which doubled as the fictional town of Chimney Rock.[2]
| Scope | Details |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Rian Johnson |
| Written by | Rian Johnson |
| Produced by | Ram Bergman Rian Johnson |
| Starring | Daniel Craig Josh O'Connor Glenn Close Josh Brolin Mila Kunis Jeremy Renner Kerry Washington Andrew Scott Cailee Spaeny Daryl McCormack Thomas Haden Church |
| Cinematography | Steve Yedlin |
| Edited by | Bob Ducsay |
| Music by | Nathan Johnson |
| Production companies | T-Street Productions Ram Bergman Productions |
| Distributed by | Netflix |
| Release dates |
|
| Running time | 144 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $151.7 million |
| Box office | $2.5 million |
| Primary filming locations |
|
Plot Summary[]
Benoit Blanc opens a letter written to him from Father Jud Duplenticy, who begins to explain the tale of the murdered priest.
Jud, a former boxer turned Catholic priest who is based in Albany, New York, gets into trouble after he punches a rude deacon. During his meeting with church leadership, he apologizes profusely and denies wishing to summon his fury again, even when a priest suggests it would be worthwhile using it on the rest of the world: Jud argues for peace and forgiveness. Bishop Langstrom assures Jud his punishment will not be too severe but he will face consequences: an assignment as assistant pastor for Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in Chimney Rock, run by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Langstrom warns Jud that Wicks is a handful, but Jud is up for the challenge. On arrival in Chimney Rock, Jud meets Wicks and the devout church secretary Martha Delacroix. Wicks has Jud take his confession, which largely consists of excruciatingly detailed descriptions of the times he has masturbated. Bewildered at the time, Jud later reflects this was Wicks' "first punch".
As he spends time at the church, Jud is made aware of its sordid history from Martha: Jefferson's mother, Grace, had a reputation as a loose woman and was branded the "harlot whore" by the community and her family. Her father, the Reverend Prentice Wicks, forced her to remain at the church with the promise that she would inherit the Wicks family fortune, said to have amounted to $80 million. Upon his death, however, the money was nowhere to be found, and all Grace received was a box labeled "Eve's Apple" containing a statuette of Christ. In what Martha describes as a demonic rage, Grace ransacked the church, destroying its cross (which the younger Wicks refuses to replace as a reminder of her status as the "harlot whore"), assaulting Martha seemingly unprovoked, before dying at the door to Prentice's mausoleum. Jud soon takes note of Wicks' incendiary preaching, which has driven away all but his most loyal parishioners: Vera Draven, a tightly wound lawyer whose father was close with the Monsignor; Cy, Vera's adopted son and a failed conservative politician who constantly records all of Wicks' lectures and most church activities; Dr. Nathaniel "Nat" Sharp, the town doctor who is reeling from his wife Darla walking out on him; Lee Ross, a washed-up formerly acclaimed novelist who hopes to break free from his niche survivalist fanbase by writing a novel about Wicks; Simone Vivane, a former cellist forced to retire due to chronic pain who believes Wicks can cure her with faith; and Samson Holt, the church's circumspect groundskeeper and Martha's lover, who credits Wicks with being his partner in sobriety. Concerned for the congregation under Wicks' influence, Jud attempts to hold a prayer group, where he opens up to the group by revealing in his past career as a boxer he killed a man in the ring, which led him to reform through Christianity; but the parishioners disband when they realize Jud organized the group without Wicks' approval. Off of Martha's mockery for his apparent attempt to usurp Wicks' power, Jud dares her to prove she is not fearful of Wicks by confessing her deepest sin to him without fear. Martha does so, pridefully, while Wicks appears stunned by what he heard.
At the latest of Wicks' confessions, Jud finally has enough and warns Wicks his preaching is shrinking his already small congregation, as well as negatively affecting the parishioners; Nat is spiraling into depression and alcohol which is affecting his work; Cy is amassing a cult-like following for Wicks by posting his sermons online; Lee is literally building a moat; and Simone has donated her life savings to the church in hopes of a cure that it cannot provide. Wicks responds by punching Jud and trying to goad him into a fight, claiming that Jud should give into the violence of his past as it is the only way forward. Jud rebukes him and vows to stop Wicks by any means necessary, a statement that is caught on camera by Cy. Jud later walks in on a meeting at the rectory where Wicks apparently confronts the parishioners about the prayer group before forcing Jud to leave. Jud heads to Il Diavolo, a nearby bar and pizzeria, where he drunkenly breaks a devil wolf head adornment from a lamp, later throwing the adornment through a church window on the way back to the rectory. On the following Good Friday service, Jud notices Wicks' sermon seems more furious than usual. After allowing Wicks to head into a storage closet next to the pulpit to recuperate, Jud begins his portion of the service, only to be interrupted by a metallic clang and seeing Wicks collapsed face-down on the floor. Jud investigates to discover blood on Wicks' vestment. Nat intervenes to inspect the body and discovers the same devil's head adornment, which has now been fashioned into a knife that was stabbed through Wicks' back. After interrogating Jud, police chief Geraldine Scott acknowledges Jud was nearest to Wicks and the adornment was last in his possession, but Wicks' murder still makes no sense. She warns him that with the public knowledge of his feud with Wicks, he will likely be considered the prime suspect by his parishioners and the community at large.
Benoit Blanc arrives at Scott's invitation. As devout an atheist as Jud is a Christian, Blanc nevertheless immediately recognizes Jud is not guilty and invites him to assist in the investigation to help clear his name, despite Scott's objections. Blanc identifies Wicks' murder as a classic locked-room mystery in the vein of The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr, which Jud realizes was part of the reading list for the parish's book club, alongside a number of other mystery novels centered on impossible crimes, meaning the suspect pool extends to the other members of the parish. The three investigate Il Diavolo, the churchgrounds, and the crime scene, but seemingly find little evidence beyond some mysterious red thread on the closet floor, as well as a sign of some kind of remote control used in the murder. Stumped, Blanc decides to change tactics and asks Jud to write a full letter with every detail about the case, starting from his assignment to Chimney Rock. Upon finishing the letter, Blanc angrily confronts Jud with the lie he had written into the letter: Jud removed Wicks' private flask from the crime scene in an honest attempt to hide Wicks' drinking from Samson, who would surely be destroyed if he learned his partner in sobriety was a fraud. Upon discovering the flask missing from his bedside table, Jud fully grasps that Wicks' murder is more nefarious and calculated than he had realized, and Blanc vows to uncover the case from interrogating the rest of the parish.
After Wicks' funeral on Easter Sunday, Blanc and Jud attempt to question the prayer group what was discussed at the meeting Jud walked in on. As it turns out, Cy taped the whole thing: Vera Draven confronted Wicks over her discovery that Cy was his illegitimate son, and had come to realize what a hypocrite Wicks really was. The rest of the parish, though shaken, attempted to pledge their loyalty to Wicks once again, only for Wicks to declare his intention to shut down the church and disavow the entire parish, individually mocking each of them for their various failings. Cy reveals that he had previously revealed his heritage to Wicks and the two had commiserated over their hatred of the church: Wicks told Cy that he had somehow tracked down his grandfather's fortune, to which Cy suggested his charisma and rhetoric could be used in conjunction with the fortune to harness a viable political career. However, Wicks did not tell Cy where the fortune was: as presumed heir, Cy requests Blanc's help to find the fortune, with the only hint he got from Wicks being "Eve's Apple." Aware of what the clue refers to, Blanc and Jud keep Cy in the dark before investigating the box with the statuette themselves. Unable to find any clues within, they find themselves back at square one until Jud notices that the request for equipment to open the Wicks Mausoleum was placed a week before Wicks' murder. Jud calls the construction company and speaks to the chatty receptionist Louise, who offers to get him the information of who requested the equipment. Before hanging up, Louise asks Jud if he could pray for her, admitting to issues with her mother in hospice. Jud, who had been rushing to solve the case with Blanc, drops everything to counsel Louise. After the call, he declares to Blanc his intention to drop out of the investigation, feeling Blanc's fervent pursuit of justice as well as his obsession with the thrill of solving the mystery is counter to the forgiveness in Christianity he wishes to practice: the call with Louise was his "Road to Damascus" moment, where he realized he prefers the practice of empathy and finding redemption he sought after he killed a man in the ring. As a violent storm arrives, Blanc allows Jud to secure the grounds, allowing him to evade the arriving police led by Scott, who had realized there was an opportunity when Jud was alone in the closet with Wicks' body for him to stab him, something Blanc had also realized but withheld.
While returning to the rectory at night, Jud appears to witness Wicks exit the mausoleum and embrace groundskeeper Samson Holt. He is knocked out pursuing them, hallucinating a confrontation with Wicks where he stabs him in the chest, and wakes up next to Samson's corpse, holding the murder weapon. Blanc and the police arrive to the horrifying sight after Jud flees, and find Martha praying at the mausoleum over Wicks' apparent resurrection, though she is soon distracted upon discovering Samson's murder. As Jud flees the crime scene, he receives a call from Louise, confirming it was Wicks himself who ordered the mausoleum opened. Fully believing that Wicks somehow faked his own death and that he (Jud) had accidentally killed Samson, Jud prepares to turn himself in to the police but is intercepted by Blanc, who had realized early on that Nat had something to do with the murder but stalled so he could track down Jud. They head to Nat's house to find his corpse dissolving in a tub of acid alongside Wicks' body. Preferring to face the congregation rather than continue the search for clues, Jud heads to the church alone to turn himself in to Geraldine, who offers to let him confess to the gathered congregation in the church. However, Blanc interrupts and commands the parishioners to sit as he shares the truth of what happened. Blanc explains he had early noticed a second devil's head lamp adornment missing from Il Diavolo, which he had realized was stolen by Nat. It was this second adornment that was initially attached to Wicks' vestment, with a small pallet of blood inside to be activated by remote control to fool Jud; after spiking Wicks' flask with tranquilizer to knock him out, Nat used his status as town doctor to swap out the adornment with the knife and stab Wicks whilst pretending to examine the body. Just as he gleefully begins to explain Wicks' resurrection and the truth of Samson's murder, however, Blanc abruptly stops and has his own "Damascus" moment, declaring to the congregation he cannot solve the case.
After everyone leaves, however, Blanc reveals to Geraldine and Jud he realized he needed to take a page from Jud, withholding his traditional case-ending summation and offer empathy to the real killer by allowing them to come forward with their dignity intact. This turns out to be Martha, who had realized Blanc's intentions and returns to the chapel to confess everything to Jud. In her youth, she witnessed Prentice swallow the valuable "Eve's Apple" diamond before his death, which he had bought with his fortune. Grace, who desperately sought the inheritance to escape her reputation and the community that had imprisoned her, had realized from the container she received what Prentice had done and so ransacked the church in an attempt to find it, assaulting young Martha when she taunted her that she would never find it. Martha kept the secret for six decades until Jud's earnestness persuaded her to reveal everything to Wicks during her confession. However, she realized during Wicks' tirade against the parish that Wicks planned to retrieve the diamond from Prentice's corpse. To stop him from spreading his hate, she plotted his murder with Nat, persuaded Samson to be buried in Wicks' place to retrieve the diamond, and had the two stage Wicks' resurrection to restore faith in the church. When Nat killed Samson, framing Jud in the process, and tried to kill Martha to get the gem for himself, Martha tricked him into consuming a cup of coffee poisoned with pentobarbital meant for her. She collapses, having already taken the rest of the poison, which Blanc had realized during his denouement. While Geraldine runs in vain for help, Martha apologizes to Jud for mistreating him since his arrival and prays for forgiveness from Wicks, Nat, and especially Samson for what she had done. Jud urges her to also pray for forgiveness from Grace, who he reminds her was a victim of her family as well; realizing this, Martha finally lets go of her decades-long hatred of Grace. Jud performs absolution before she dies, and she drops the diamond. Blanc, noticing Geraldine's absence, leaves it up to Jud what to do with the diamond.
One year later, Jud is about to reopen the church, now renamed Our Lady of Perpetual Grace. Most of the former parishioners have moved on with their lives- Vera has disowned Cy, closed her practice, and moved on to a new life of freedom from the church and her family; Lee has found success with his book about Wicks, but is disappointed to learn his fanbase remains filled with the same type of survivalists he despised; and Simone has learned to live with her pain and returned to music. Cy, on the other hand, is disgruntled at the disappearance of the diamond and threatens to sue Jud, Blanc, and the church if the diamond is not returned, but they all proclaim ignorance. Bishop Langstrom wishes Jud luck on reopening the parish, warning that Wicks loyalists spurred on by Cy's videos will likely still distrust him, but Jud assures him he can handle it. Jud invites Blanc to attend his first service, to which Blanc politely declines, still an atheist but nevertheless trusting of Jud's role as a community leader. As Jud welcomes new parishioners to his first service, it is revealed to the audience that the diamond is hidden inside the church's new crucifix built by Jud.
Cast & Characters[]
- Main article: Wake Up Dead Man Cast
Main Cast[]
- Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, a private detective
- Josh O'Connor as Jud Duplenticy, a young priest and former boxer who reformed after killing a man in a match
- Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, a devout church lady and Wicks' right-hand woman
- Josh Brolin as Msgr. Jefferson Wicks, a charismatic and domineering priest who serves as the congregation's central figure
- Mila Kunis as Geraldine Scott, a local police chief
- Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat Sharp, a town doctor
- Kerry Washington as Vera Draven, Esq., a tightly wound lawyer
- Andrew Scott as Lee Ross, a formerly best-selling author fallen on hard times
- Cailee Spaeny as Simone Vivane, a disabled former concert cellist
- Daryl McCormack as Cy Draven, Vera's adoptive son, an aspiring politician
- Thomas Haden Church as Samson Holt, a circumspect groundskeeper and Martha's lover
Appearances[]
Locations[]
- Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude church
- Il Diavolo - a pub and pizzaria in the town of Chimney Rock
- Chimney Rock Police Department
- Draven & Draven Law firm
Music[]
- Main article: Wake Up Dead Man (soundtrack)
Galleries[]
Posters[]
Photos[]
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- Rian Johnson based the screenplay in part on his own religious upbringing: like Blanc, he was raised in organized religion but has since become an atheist. Unlike Blanc, Johnson was raised in Evangelism (specifically within a Reagan presidency-era context) but chose to depict Catholicism in this film for aesthetic reasons.[3]
- This is the first film in the franchise where none of the culprits end up getting arrested for their crimes with both Martha Delacroix and Nat Sharp ending up dead by the end of the movie.
- A deleted scene from the film's second act saw the investigative team visiting Lee Ross's house where they would learn about the origins of the murder weapon. While the scene was cut due to pacing issues, the footage was reused earlier in the film for the character's introduction: Mila Kunis and Daniel Craig had to be digitally edited out of the background of the shot.[4]
- Rian Johnson forgot the reference to Jeremy Renner in Glass Onion until after he had cast him as Nat Sharp. As an easter egg, Johnson snuck a bottle of the Renning Hot! hot sauce onto one of the shelves in the Il Diavolo bar.[5]
External links[]
References[]
- ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/glenn-close-knives-out-3-1235911053/
- ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyn5e641yjo
- ↑ Rian Johnson’s Explains How His Religious Upbringing Inspired 'Wake Up Dead Man'
- ↑ 'Wake Up Dead Man' spoiler interview: Rian Johnson on ‘the hardest script I’ve ever written,’ the secret cameo, and the character and scene you never saw
- ↑ Rian Johnson Breaks Down a Scene From 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery'