By India McCarty
For writer and director Rian Johnson, new murder mystery movie WAKE UP DEAD MAN was a way to revisit his “early life in the church.”
“We had a great time making [GLASS ONION]. It’s a big, broad kind of vacation comedy,” he told Movieguide®, referring to the previous installment in his mega-popular KNIVES OUT murder mystery series.
Johnson continued, “So for this one, it felt like it would be fun to ground it, and the path I took to that was, okay, let’s make it about something that is very personal for me and that will, by its nature, ground it. And that’s what led me to making the movie sort of about faith, and in the world of faith.”
The writer-director shared that he “grew up very Christian,” adding, “My relationship with Christ was how I framed the entire world around me.”
When it came time to write WAKE UP DEAD MAN, Johnson was attracted to the idea of having a “multifaceted kind of conversation with myself about [faith]…doing it with a truly generous spirit and in the context of a big entertaining Hollywood movie — that seemed like a really worthy challenge.”
Related: WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY
“A lot of [the writing process] was me just drawing from my early life in the church and my memories of those experiences,” he continued.
Johnson drew inspiration from G.K. Chesterton’s popular Father Brown book series, explaining, “The thing that makes him a good detective is not that he understands the holy, it’s that he understands the human and he understands the sinful nature of man, and he understands and has human empathy and grace for people who are driven to do terrible things.”
“It almost feels like the good is amplified alongside the evil of the crime at stake,” he added.
In an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year, Johnson called WAKE UP DEAD MAN “Gothic,” with a “much more grounded tone.”
“It kind of gets back to the real origins of the genre, which, predating [Agatha] Christie, go back to [Edgar Allan] Poe,” he shared.
WAKE UP DEAD MAN is the third movie in the KNIVES OUT series, and Johnson shows no signs of abandoning the franchise.
“I feel like, for me, the only kind of restrictions are first of all that audiences are still digging them, and second that Daniel [Craig, who plays detective Benoit Blanc] and I feel like we’re trying something different and reaching for something new and challenging ourselves and thus hopefully giving you guys something new every time,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
He continued, “The instant we feel like we’re just turning the crank on another one, we’ll stop — but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, and I would be thrilled if, amongst other things, I can come back and keep making these the rest of my life. I’d be a happy man.”
WAKE UP DEAD MAN premieres on Netflix Dec. 12.
Read Next: KNIVES OUT Director Rian Johnson Admits He Grew Up Listening To Christian Rock
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