The upcoming whodunnit Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to raucous praise and reviews, and it has now been revealed that director Rian Johnson had a unique way to get the actors in the right headspace when the camera was rolling. According to Entertainment Weekly, cast member Janelle Monáe said during the festival premiere that Johnson would plan actual murder mystery parties for the cast on the weekends, similar to the crime sleuthing that is seen in the film. "We really bonded," Monáe said of the cast. "During the middle of making a murder mystery film, we really were having murder mystery parties on Saturdays. Every weekend. Rian would send a handwritten note to us all."
It is unclear what exactly these games would entail, or which (or all) of the cast members were involved. However, Monáe took the opportunity to sing the praises of her co-stars, as well as Johnson, saying it was a "life-gasm being able to bond with everybody." She added, "This is what it's about; the human experience. It's really the people you have these experiences with that makes them so fulfilling and rich."
There may be no better group of people to have a murder mystery party with then the cast of Glass Onion. The sequel to Johnson's highly successful 2019 film Knives Out, which featured a similar mystery solving premise, Glass Onion features a large ensemble cast. The call sheet is led by Daniel Craig, the only cast member to return from the original film. Craig stars once again as Benoit Blanc, the ambitious decective with the thick southern accent who helped to put together the pieces in Knives Out after a patriarch is found murdered in his Massachusetts mansion. In addition to Craig and Monáe, the ensemble cast in Glass Onion is rounded out by a host of notable names, including Edward Norton, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Dave Bautista, Kate Hudson and Ethan Hawke. These cast members will portray a diverse group of characters, including a tech billionaire, a scientist, a fashion designer and even a state governor.
Glass Onion shifts the scene away from the East Coast to a more sunny locale, a private island in Greece with Blanc, along with a number of other guests, are ushered onto a large yacht for - what else - a murder mystery party. While all of the players have been invited aboard the yacht, Blanc suspects that, just like in the first film, a more sinister motive may be afoot. This suspicion is confirmed when someone turns up dead, forcing Blanc to go into detective mode once again. As the film progresses, it is revealed that each character is harboring some secrets of their own.
Beyond moving the setting out of the United States, Johnson said that Glass Onion feels different in tone and scale as well. The director, also known for helming 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi, told Entertainment Weekly that the film "had a very different narrative gambit to it in that it was trying something different and unique, and tonally, I was going to go where the characters led me, which, given the characters in the movie, ended up to a slightly bigger place." This may not be the last time that the knives will be gotten out, either. Netflix, which is releasing the film on its streaming service this holiday season, already has a deal in place for a third film in the series. The deal was part of a massive purchase by the company to acquire the rights to the property. No details on this potential film have been revealed, though.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery begins streaming on Netflix on December 23. Read Collider's review of the film here, and watch the teaser trailer below: