“This movie, above everything else, is designed to be a good time with a big crowd of folks in a theater,” said Johnson.Īs far as the specific theatrical rollout, Johnson said it’s still being worked out. 23 after a theatrical run beginning in November. While Netflix often gives its most prominent films several weeks in select theaters before streaming, the streamer and exhibitors discussed a wider release for “Glass Onion.” Currently, that’s not expected Netflix will stream the film beginning Dec. That’s put particular focus on the release of “Glass Onion,” a likely box-office success if it were released widely in theaters, at a time when the film industry is grappling with the equilibrium between streaming and theaters. After “Knives Out” became one of 2019′s biggest hits, grossing $311 million worldwide against a $40 million budget, Netflix swooped in to pay $450 million for two sequels. That will strike many viewers as either fitting or ironic considering that “Glass Onion,” unlike “Knives Out,” is a movie for Netflix, a self-styled Hollywood disrupter that over the past decade has radically altered the movie business. In the film, Bron considers his inner circle a gang of “disrupters.” Johnson juggles themes of truth and stupidity with echoes of today’s American politics, and also takes a satirical approach to tech moguls. The cast includes a standout Janelle Monáe, Dave Bautista, Madelyn Cline, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, Jessica Henwick and Leslie Odom Jr. While the less said the better about the many-layered plot of “Glass Onion,” it revolves around tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), who invites a small group of friends to his private island (much of the film was shot in Greece) for a murder mystery party. The boisterous audience response and glowing reviews out of Toronto suggested that Johnson, who also wrote the film, did just that. “Part of the real pleasure of it for me is having a whodunit that’s not a period piece but set in modern America and that fully engages with whatever’s on people’s minds at the time - hopefully in a way that’s still completely encased within an entertainment,” said Johnson. The film, set in early 2020, starts with characters in masks and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in lockdown - soaking in his bathtub, mostly - and hungry for a new case. If “Knives Out” bridged a long-ago movie world - a cocktail of eccentric murder suspects hounded by a colorful sleuth - with contemporary issues of class and ethnicity, “Glass Onion” had the task of collapsing pre-pandemic moviegoing with today’s still unfolding recovery. “It’s surreal,” said Johnson, the 48-year-old director of “The Last Jedi” and “Looper,” in an interview ahead of the premiere of “Glass Onion.” “It’s so strange thinking of the 30 years that have gone by in the three years since we played a movie at Toronto.” The “Knives Out” films almost perfectly bookend the last three pandemic years the original “Knives Out” had premiered in the same theater almost exactly three years prior, where Johnson’s modern spin on a retro genre more or less blew the roof off. The roar of the crowd made it clear that, yes, they, too, could hardly wait. “Are you guys ready to have a good time?” yelled Johnson. When Johnson introduced the film to the eager Princess of Wales Theater audience on Saturday night, he didn’t calmly stroll out on the stage with a polite wave to the crowd. Three years after premiering “Knives Out” at the Toronto International Film Festival, Rian Johnson returned to the scene of the crime to debut his much-anticipated whodunit sequel, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”
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