Glass Onion dared do something few sequels do: It came up with a completely different title. Well, not completely: The official name of the film is Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. It’s a clumsy title and even writer/director Rian Johnson confessed he didn’t exactly like it either. But for the franchise’s third outing, he thinks he’s come up with a new solution that will keep the moneymen happy.
In a new chat on the podcast The Filmcast (as caught by Deadline), Johnson said he “understood” why Netflix wouldn’t let him call it simply Glass Onion. He even said the move wasn’t “done against my will or something.” He explained that people who enjoyed Knives Out probably knew the title Knives Out more than they knew the name of Benoit Blanc, the sleuth played by Foghorn Leghorn-accented Daniel Craig. He’d even go so far to say that had he told people he was making another Benoit Blanc movie and not a Knives Out sequel, he “would’ve gotten blank stares.”
Still, Johnson admits the subtitle “kills me a little bit,” and that he wants to “see how quickly we can lose that subtitle.” He would much prefer a different one, specifically “A Benoit Blanc Mystery.” He thinks it might even be time to switch it up:
“I will say, with [Glass Onion], 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.”
So is it safe to say Benoit Blanc a major movie character now? If you told people there was a third Benoit Blanc movie coming, might everyone know what you were talking about? More importantly, which semi-deep cut song by an absurdly popular band will Johnson name the threequel after? Steely Dan certainly has a lot of cool song titles, to name one. How about Glamour Profession: A Benoit Blanc Mystery?
(Via Deadline)