This is a cinephile’s version of the NBA draft or the frenetic energy of a trade deadline: a respected director is putting together a big ensemble cast for a highly anticipated new feature. Remember the glee, the anticipatory delight, of watching every actor you’d ever heard of filter into Team Barbie or Team Oppenheimer? (In that showdown, everybody won.) With his Benoit Blanc movies (or “Knives Out mysteries,” as Netflix demands to subtitle them), Rian Johnson has helpfully created a semi-annual casting celebration where Hollywood’s who’s-who all sign up for a new whodunit. All this to say, Variety has now confirmed that Andrew Scott has joined the cast of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
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Scott’s casting comes hot on the heels of two other buzzy actors, Josh O’Connor (Challengers) and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), joining the film. Much like his co-stars, Scott has recently reached a career peak with critically acclaimed performances in Fleabag, All Of Us Strangers, and Netflix’s Ripley. However, he’s long had a cult following as a fan-favorite villain from projects like BBC’s Sherlock and the 2015 James Bond flick Spectre, in which he appeared alongside Benoit Blanc himself, Daniel Craig.
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Scott, O’Connor, and Spaeny are just the first in what is likely to be a deluge of Wake Up Dead Man casting announcements in the coming days. Over on Twitter/X, last week’s title announcement prompted a flurry of fantasy casts that, frankly, are just as plausible as any of the rumors going around. Early murmurs suggested Tom Hardy and Lindsay Lohan might join the suspect list (Lohan does have a relationship with Netflix, though her recent work for the streamer is not exactly Knives Out caliber). Until the dust settles, beware of any fake DiscussingFilm accounts claiming that your faves are in the running. (Always check for a secondary source on social media casting chatter!)
Beyond this burgeoning cast, we don’t know much yet about Wake Up Dead Man. Johnson has expressed his excitement to explore the range of the whodunit genre, which includes a “whole tonal spectrum from Carr to Christie,” so we can expect something a little different from the new entry. A brief teaser for the third film promised the new mystery would be Benoit Blanc’s “most dangerous case yet.” So to all you movie stars out there, if you’re in line for a Knives Out role, stay in line! But if you don’t make the cut, know that you’ll probably have another chance at a consolation prize when Poker Face gets around to its own A-list ensemble for the second season.