Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind the awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Rian Johnson‘s third film in his mystery franchise with another stellar ensemble led by Daniel Craig as master detective Benoit Blanc.
As with the first two Knives Out movies, Netflix bowed the threequel at the Toronto Film Festival in September. The streamer gave the Gothic-tinged tale a short theatrical release around Thanksgiving before premiering it on its platform December 12.
Since then, it has been named a Top 10 film by the National Board of Review, with the Oscar noms looming: Johnson, remember, landed Screenplay nominations for the original Knives Out and the sequel Glass Onion.
Wake Up Dead Man‘s plot centers on a quaint church with the long-serving powerful Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) at the helm. When young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) with a somewhat troubled past is assigned to join him and he gets to know the small but unusually devoted flock, he finds there is much more to uncover behind the church’s Gothic walls.
With Jud’s suspicions at their peak, a murder takes place, and Jud becomes the prime suspect. The local sheriff (Mila Kunis) calls in the famed Blanc, no fan of the institution of religion it turns out, to crack the case. In the process, Blanc and Jud form a team of sorts, tracking clues and colliding over universal themes of faith, belonging and the nature of belief as the proceedings get more strange and twisty.
The as-always big cast this time includes Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack and Thomas Haden Church.
Read Johnson’s screenplay below.
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