“I come into the process with the assumption that the audience collectively is much smarter than I am, and that I’m not going to be able to mislead them,” Johnson says.

*Wake Up Dead Man *director Rian Johnson explains how he decides on the killers in the Knives Out series

"I come into the process with the assumption that the audience collectively is much smarter than I am, and that I'm not going to be able to mislead them," Johnson says.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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December 15, 2025 8:00 a.m. ET

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Daniel Craig in 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery'. Credit:

Courtesy of Netflix

- Rian Johnson says that his first idea while writing *Wake Up Dead Man* was to make the film an exploration of faith.

- The *Knives Out* filmmaker says that choosing his whodunnit killers is always "a very early decision" in the process.

- Johnson says that his murder mysteries "have to be a rollercoaster ride. They can't just be a puzzle that I'm presenting to the audience."

How do you start writing a murder mystery?

For Rian Johnson, it's a complicated process. The filmmaker has written and directed three whodunnits to date: 2019's *Knives Out*, its 2022 sequel *Glass Onion*, and this year's *Wake Up Dead Man*.

The latest installment in Johnson's series sees Daniel Craig return as Detective Benoit Blanc, who investigates a complicated murder at a church in upstate New York. The decedent appears to be the victim of an impossible crime, and almost everyone in the church community — played by the likes of Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church — has something to hide.

In a conversation with **, Johnson dives into his process for crafting a satisfying murder mystery.

Cailee Spaeny, Kerry Washington, Thomas Haden Church, Glenn Close, and Daryl McCormack in 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.'.

John Wilson/Netflix

**: How does the writing process begin on a movie like *Wake Up Dead Man*? Do you start with the idea that you want to explore religion as a theme, or do you start with the concept of a locked room mystery and work backwards from there?**

**RIAN JOHNSON: **This one was a bit of a soup of stuff floating around together, but it did start with the idea of faith. When we were at the London Film Festival with *Glass Onion*, Daniel and I went out after, and that was the first thing that I told him: "I think we should ground the next one, and I would love to make it set in a church and have it kind of be about faith." And he kind of raised an eyebrow. He goes, "Okay!"

And I had been reading John Dickson Carr and discovering that author, who's a golden age detective novelist who specialized in the locked room mystery and the impossible crime. So all these ideas coalesced, but the spearhead was the idea of faith.

Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig in London on Oct. 8, 2025.

Karwai Tang/WireImage

**At what point in the process do you land on who the guilty parties are going to be? Is that a very early decision, or do you cook up a bunch of characters and then decide how they figure into a plot afterward?**

Yeah, it's a very early decision, and it's very important *why* it's an early decision. It's one of the guiding principles for me in writing all of these movies: I try to constantly remind myself that first and foremost, these have to be *movies*, and that means they have to be propulsive. They have to be a rollercoaster ride. They can't just be a puzzle that I'm presenting to the audience.

They need to be emotionally involving, and they need to have a story arc. And you can't mistake the reveal of information for a dramatic turn. So that means that for them to have a satisfying ending, the notion of who'd done it is not just, "Oh my God, it was that person!"

It has to be something where, when that reveal happens, and when the aftermath of that reveal happens — which is the real climax — it's been baked in from the beginning of why that emotional impact lands. Personally, I think this is the case with the best of Agatha Christie's books. I think you can generally guess who did the crime, not because it's the least likely person, but because if you stop before the final chapter and ask yourself, "Who would it be most dramatically satisfying for the killer to be?", nine times out of 10, that'll be the answer because she's a good writer.

Because ultimately, if you get a surprise out of the audience of, "Oh, I didn't know it was that person," then that's only three seconds of pleasure. But if you really land, "Oh my God, it was that person —* of course it was!*" — that's when you get a full impact at the end.

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**One of the joys of watching these Benoit movies is that it feels like you're always anticipating exactly what I'm thinking is going to happen, and even when I'm expecting to be surprised, my guesses still keep getting upended. How do you anticipate audience expectations in your writing and directing? Do you have a sounding board of friends or collaborators where you're polling what they think will happen next, or is this all happening in your head automatically?**

Well, I have very good friends that I bounce stuff off of. Generally, though, it's less about the element you're talking about, and more about: Is this entertaining? Is this clear? Is this working?

In terms of what you're talking about, it's interesting because I come into the process with the assumption that the audience collectively is much smarter than I am, and that I'm not going to be able to mislead them or purposefully get them thinking one thing so I can surprise them with another. That's never gonna work.

Daniel Craig in 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery'.

John Wilson/Netflix

The most effective tool for distracting the audience is entertainment. Like I said, you have to make sure they're on a rollercoaster ride — if I'm sweeping them along with the track of "Oh my God, what's gonna happen to this character that I care about?" And "Oh geez, that's horrible for him. How is he gonna get out of this?"

When I have them lean forward with *that*, then I know what direction their noses are pointed, and I know they're following this, and they're concerned about this. And then when those turns happen, they aren't just intellectual turns because they involve somebody the audience cares about, but also there's a more likely chance that they will be surprising for the audience because the rollercoaster cart has been going one direction and then suddenly it drops.

**I'm curious about your process for finding the right actors for each role. Are you writing with specific people in mind, or do you form the characters and then think about casting afterwards?**

I try not to write with actors in mind, just because I've learned that it's a pathway to heartbreak if you don't get them because of scheduling or whatever. And I feel like if I'm writing with an actor in my head, it generally means that I'm just kind of copying another character I've seen that actor play. So I try to write as much as I can with abstract, great characters, or the characters in my head will be based on people I've known in life. If they are actors, it's better for them to be, you know, like Robert Mitchum or something like that.

And then when I cast, I work with my casting directors, Mary Vernieu and Bret Howe, who I've been working with for years. I'll have a general conversation with them about who the character is and what the basic traits are, and then they'll just check who's available, and they'll throw me lists and ideas, and we'll say, "What about this? What about that?" And then I'll get excited about someone.

Ultimately, the other thing that I've learned is: as opposed to trying to match the type of the character to the type that you associate with an actor, just try to always get the best actor for the part. And more interesting, actually, if it's a character that you can't necessarily imagine that actor playing. That's served me well so far.

Daniel Craig in 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery'.

Courtesy of Netflix

**Once the cast is assembled, how much do you work with each actor to shape the character? Do they contribute a lot that ends up making a change from what you had on the page, or does it end up being pretty similar to how you'd envisioned it from the start?**

It ends up being pretty similar, but I always set aside time before we get into shooting to sit down with each actor and go through their part in the script with them and check and listen to them — to hear if there are things that don't make sense to them. If there are things that they think are missing in terms of, "Oh, there's a beat missing here for this character," or "Could we explore this or that?" And to have that dialogue with the actor.

I carve out space with each of the actors to talk through their characters with them. And then sometimes there are moments that come out of that that end up being incorporated into the script. And sometimes there are additional beats, and sometimes there are cuts where we realize, "Oh, we actually don't need this beat in here." So it's very collaborative, but it's always refining what's on the page as opposed to taking it in a completely new direction, because these scripts are such mouse traps that you can't really do that.

Daniel Craig and Josh O'Connor in 'Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery'.

**Were there any particular moments that you really loved that you then ended up having to cut?**

Yeah, there always are. [*Laughs*] Inevitably, when you're writing, and there's a moment that you hold dear, nine times outta 10, that's what you'll have to cut in the edit. The edit is an angry god, and it always demands you sacrifice your firstborn. And even with a scene like the pivotal phone call scene in *Wake Up Dead Man*, I was writing it, I was terrified that I would get to the edit and it wouldn't work, or I'd feel like I had to cut around it.

Yeah, there were things big and small that ended up dropping out, and some of them inevitably are some of the funniest moments that I feel like we shot. But when you're in the edit, you have to lash yourself to the mast, and you gotta keep things on track, and you gotta make those sacrifices. Because ultimately it's about making the movie as strong as it can be.

*Wake Up Dead Man* is now playing in select theaters and streaming on Netflix.

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.*

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