A Knives Out Mystery and Knives Out 3

In 2019, screenwriter and director Ryan Johnson‘c Out of the knives put a modern twist on the classic whodunit with an all-star ensemble including Daniel Craig like the distinguished southern detective Benoit Blanc. Now Johnson is returning to the universe that won the director an Oscar for best original screenplay, with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mysteryintroducing an all-new stacked lineup of suspects when tech billionaire Miles Bronn (Edward Norton) invites his wealthy friends to his Greek island for a puzzling competition.

Blanc returns, and when someone on the island turns out to be really dead, the New Money team is forced to cut out their fun. Along with Craig and Norton, Glass onion Characteristic Kate Hudson like superstar model Birdie Jay, Katherine Hahn as a politician and trusted Governor Claire Fat as well as dave bautista as Twitch streamer Duke Cody, Leslie Odom Jr such as the engineer Lionel Toussaint and Janelle Monae like Bronn’s former business partner Andy Brandt. They are also present at the party Madeline Klein as Whiskey, Duke Cody’s girlfriend, and Jessica Henwick as Peg, Birdie’s devoted assistant.

Overtakes Glass onionpremiered on Netflix, Collider’s Steve Weintraub managed to sit down with director Johnson. During the interview, Johnson shared where the inspiration for his sequel came from and what was the most challenging sequence in his filmography to shoot. He also reveals how Glass onion was almost a completely different narrative and what to expect from the next film in the franchise. You can watch the interview in the video above or read the full transcript below.

COLLIDER: So listen, I want to start by saying congratulations on the sequel. You did an amazing job with it.

RYAN JOHNSON: Thanks, man.

Because the first movie was so successful and Netflix paid for two sequels, and they paid a lot of money, did you feel a little pressure or more pressure while making the sequel, like, “This really has to be a good movie”?

JOHNSON: I mean, yeah, but no more pressure than you always have when you’re doing something new, like, “This has to be a good movie,” I think. I hope this is always there. I mean, I wrote this thing before we did the Netflix deal, so I didn’t know who we were doing it with when I wrote it, so that didn’t come into play. But, yeah, I don’t know. I think for me it was the fact that the way to do another one, as opposed to trying to build on or build on the first one, was to look back at how Agatha Christie wrote her novels, where each one was completely different and there was own reason to be. I think let me just approach this one as its own movie with its own goals and its own everything. So I think maybe that helped ease some of the tension. But, yeah, I definitely felt it a little bit.

With all the films you’ve done, which shot or sequence was the most challenging to shoot, whether it was the camera movements, whether it was the dialogue and the camera movement?

JOHNSON: A real pain in the ass. I mean, we’ve had difficult shots before, but in terms of the scenes, I mean, I feel like maybe it’s not the most difficult, but in the first Out of the knives there’s a sequence that starts the movie in the library where Blanc is interrogating all the suspects, and it’s a very complex scene where there are a lot of interruptions to the various interrogations. And you tune into each sign trying to get very clear information. And I think that sequence, whatever it was, 8, 10 minutes, we recut over and over again for the length of the editing process until the very end. That was the last thing we were working on, we were still trying to get it down. So any time you have a complex sequence like this, it’s something you always dig into.

When you came up with the idea for Glass onion, how much did you argue “This is the idea I want to implement”? Because obviously you’re doing another one after this one, but how did you know, “This was the one I wanted for the next movie”? And did you almost do something else?

JOHNSON: There were a few things that amused me. One of them was a bigger, more meta, even more meta, wacky idea that I’m not going to present in case I want to use it down the line, I don’t want to spoil it.

But no, I don’t know. That’s one thing that can be a potential trap for those especially, thinking like, “Oh my God, how do I top that last one?” I think you could probably get into a cycle of thinking, dismissing every idea as not good enough, because no idea is good enough until you start working on it, I think. So I just picked a horse early and was like, “Okay, this is going to be it.” And you start walking the path and sculpting it, and then it becomes the thing and becomes what it is.

The response to this film was very strong. And I’m curious, as a director, I think you said you wanted to start making another one Out of the knives as the next movie, does it energize you when you have that reaction? And part two to this one is, do you already have the idea for the next one?

JOHNSON: Energizing. Also, like your previous question, it’s scary because when you do something, it’s like a ball of mud that you shape. You have your hands in it, it’s personal, it’s your thing. And then the moment you put it out there, especially if people like it, all of a sudden it becomes this and we’re sitting here doing these interviews about it and talking about it. Suddenly that thing outside of you becomes something gilded and you kind of forget how you did it. So that actually makes it a little scarier, but in a good way, I mean, to do the next one.

I have no idea about the next one. Now I’m starting to think. And the big thing for me is how it can be totally different, not only from the first one, but from Glass onion?

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery now streaming on Netflix. For more, check out Collider’s interview with stars Kathryn Hahn and Kate Hudson below: