Rian Johnson Wants A Different Subtitle on Next Knives Out Sequel

When Glass Onion came out, Netflix and Rian Johnson decided it should get the subtitle A Knives Out Mystery. A lot of people ended up scratching their heads when the film came out with what seemed like an unnecessary subtitle, but apparently, it was important that people knew the movie was related to Knives Out for the sake of marketing it to fans of the film.

Despite the clumsy title, the second film in this series helped cement Benoit Blanc, the film’s central figure and detective, as someone who could hold his own in the mystery genre. The films are heavily modeled on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories, even if they aren’t adaptations of any of her novels. As such, it turns out that “A Benoit Blanc Mystery” would be a much more reasonable subtitle.

Rian Johnson recently appeared on The Filmcast, where he addressed the addition of the subtitle. While it was Netflix’s idea, he didn’t necessarily disagree with it:

The thing is, though, I totally get it. It’s not like this was done against my will or something. I completely understand it. Because after the first movie, I think people knew that they liked Knives Out. They didn’t necessarily know it well enough to know who Benoit Blanc was. I think that would’ve gotten blank stares … But also, it kills me a little bit and I want to see how quickly we can lose that subtitle.

He also said he was hopefully that pretty soon they would be able to replace A Knives Out Mystery with A Benoit Blanc Mystery:

As soon as we can get past those and get to ‘A Benoit Blanc Mystery‘ … and I will say, with this one, with the reach of Netflix and just how many more people I feel like have seen it and how much more it feels like it’s actually in the culture, we’re at least getting closer to being able to get away with ‘A Benoit Blanc Mystery’ and people would know what we’re talking about.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is currently streaming on Netflix. There‘s currently no timetable for the release of the third Benoit Blanc Mystery.