Glass Onion Director Didn’t Want Knives Out in the Title

Director Rian Johnson originally didn’t want his new project Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery to have the words “Knives Out” in the title. It may be hard to remember this now, but the first Knives Out movie was a Lionsgate production that was released in theaters in 2019. Netflix then bought the film franchise, which led to Glass Onion dominating Netflix’s Top 10 list. Daniel Craig’s Detective Benoit Blanc is the only returning character in Glass Onion, and Rian Johnson worked hard to make the film a standalone movie, to the point where “Glass Onion” is the only name used onscreen.

“I’ve tried hard to make them self-contained,” Johnson said in an interview with The Atlantic. “Honestly, I’m pissed off that we have A Knives Out Mystery in the title. You know? I want it to just be called Glass Onion.”

The filmmaker continued, “I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling.”

Netflix CEO Discusses Glass Onion’s Theatrical Release

While Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is considered a Netflix original movie, it also got a one-week release in theaters. Glass Onion played in 600 theaters across the country, running from November 23rd through November 29th for the Thanksgiving holiday. When asked why Netflix chose to go with that model when there were longer release windows rumored to have been considered, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos had the following explanation: 

“First I’ll tell you: we’re in the business of entertaining our members, with Netflix movies on Netflix. So that’s where we focus all of our energy and most of our spends.” Sarandos said definitively. 

“I’d love it to be [in theaters] longer; I’d love it to be in more theaters,” Johnson told The Atlantic. “But also, I appreciate that Netflix has done this, because this was a huge effort on their part, and the theater chains, to reach across the aisle and make this happen. I’m hoping it does really well so we can demonstrate that they can complement each other.”

There’s also a Knives Out 3 in the works, so we’ll have to wait and hear what the release strategy for that will be. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix.