News Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery Wake Up Dead Man Plot Details Reveal How the Next Knives Out Mystery Returns to the Genre’s Origins Wake Up Dead Man is coming this fall to theaters and Netflix. By Molly Templeton | Published on September 3, 2025 Image: Netflix © 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Netflix © 2025 Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is headed back to movie theaters. Wake Up Dead Man, writer-director Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out mystery, is getting a brief theatrical release before it shows up on Netflix in December, and what’s more, Netflix has finally, finally revealed just a few details about the film. We know the important stuff, sure: Benoit Blanc shows up someplace to solve a murder. But Wake Up Dead Man sounds quite different than the second film, Glass Onion, and Johnson says it’s drawing more from the past than the future for inspiration. “It’s more similar to the first Knives Out in that it gets back to the real origins of the genre, which predate Agatha Christie, going back to Edgar Allan Poe,” Johnson told Netflix’s Tudum. “It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, so it’s funny and fun, but it’s set in an old stone church, there are lots of graveyards.” It’s set in a church because this film’s new central character is “an eager young priest” with the unlikely name of Jud Duplenticy, played by Josh O’Connor. Duplenticy has come to a small town in upstate New York to work alongside Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who is described as a “charismatic firebrand.” Wicks’ congregation includes Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), and Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny). That’s a lot of suspects for the “impossible murder” Blanc hopes to solve. There’s one more player in this game, too: local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis). “Themes of guilt, mystery, morality, and fallible humanity all feel right at home in a church, with a man of God in the center of the mix,” Johnson told Tudum. “I have strong feelings about faith: both my own personal experience and how it intersects with our country’s cultural and civic life, and the ways that intersection touches all of us differently. So it felt like rich ground for a good story.” Wake Up Dead Man will be in select theaters November 26, and on Netflix December 12.[end-mark] The post <i>Wake Up Dead Man</i> Plot Details Reveal How the Next <i>Knives Out</i> Mystery Returns to the Genre’s Origins appeared first on Reactor.