Rian Johnson Talks Childhood, Star Wars, & AI As 'Wake Up Dead Man' Hits Theaters
Image Source: Entertainment Tonight
On his press tour for Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss his filmmaking journey. The newest film in the Knives Out series once again stars Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc, who sets out to solve a gothic murder mystery in a small Catholic church community. While Johnson grew up not in a Catholic but in an Evangelical community, his relationship with Christianity gave him inspiration for the film. He explained, “Every single one of them [characters] is a different side of my own personal experience with faith.”
Discussing the suspects in the movie, Johnson reflected on his own younger self: “I know that feeling of it feeling good to jab at the world. I hope I wasn’t that bad, but I can relate.” Johnson drifted away from Christianity in college, but clarified that he had to reckon with that loss of identity.
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Image Source: JoBlo
Johnson got his start in filmmaking with Brick, a low-budget high school detective story featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In the meantime, he created promos for the Disney Channel and instructional videos for the Preschool for Deaf Children. The success of Brick led to Johnson’s second feature, The Brothers Bloom. Making a name for himself, Johnson got pulled into the Looper writing team and also wrote Star Wars: The Last Jedi. He has shut down rumors of writing a fresh trilogy for the franchise but clarified that Star Wars is “a part of me and the way I think.”
Johnson’s next product will be a theatrical release, the first one since the pandemic altered the landscape. This fresh project is a ‘70’s-inspired paranoid thriller. Finally, Johnson addressed the troubling rise of AI in the entertainment industry. He said, “It’s something that’s making everything worse in every single way.”
Wake Up, Dead Man will have a limited theatrical release starting on November 26 before arriving on Netflix on December 12.
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Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, AV Club
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