Rian Johnson Reacts to Knives Out’s Oscar Nomination

The 2020 Oscar nominees were announced on Monday, and they covered a surprising range of movies that were released in the past year. Among the films that earned praise was Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out, which scored a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. While Knives Out has been a bit of a fixture on the awards circuit thus far, news of the nomination came as an unexpected surprise to Johnson, and he celebrated it on social media in a pretty great way. In a series of tweets, which you can check out below, Johnson responded to the nomination with a simple “holy crap”, while later proclaiming that he’s “honored and proud” to be in the category. He capped it off with a gif of himself and Noah Segan at the Critics Choice Awards this previous weekend.

Joining Knives Out in the Best Original Screenplay category are 1917, Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and Parasite.

While Knives Out rests in a whole different category from Johnson’s previous film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi – with one of their few similarities being a cameo from Frank Oz – the two do have a very unique connection. Johnson’s first foray into writing and directing in the Star Wars universe, and the vitriolic backlash to it on social media, apparently influenced Knives Out in a unique way.

“Anyone who’s on Twitter these days, God bless you because it’s rough waters out there, but there’s also wonderful stuff about it. That’s why we’re all still on it I guess,” Johnson told Deadline in November. “That’s one of the things [Knives Out] engages with, the current state of online culture. Whether you made a Star Wars movie or you have a cooking show, whatever you’re doing on there, someone’s going to be screaming at you about it probably. Let’s put it on a screen in a way we can all maybe have a laugh about it.”

Knives Out is written and directed by Johnson, with a cast that also includes Ana de Armas, Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon, Katherine Langford, Lakeith Stanfield, and Christopher Plummer. It is currently in theaters now.

What do you think of Knives Out‘s Oscar nomination? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!