Rian Johnson Crushes Our Muppet Knives Out Dreams

As the release date for the third Knives Out installment, Wake Up Dead Man, approaches, speculation has already started to ramp up for where the franchise goes from here. Director Rian Johnson has made it pretty clear that he’d like to continue telling stories in this universe, so the real question (outside of whether Netflix signs back up to distribute more films) is what sort of bizarre case Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc will solve next. 

“Creatively, I feel energized after making this one,” he told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere for Wake Up Dead Man. “Daniel and I are already starting to formulate… what could the next one be if we do another one?”

What that actually means at the moment is anyone’s guess. But what we do know is that Johnson’s not planning to take advantage of the internet’s favorite (and often repeated) suggestion, which is that Blanc’s next murder case should somehow involve the Muppets. This truly isn’t as weird as it sounds; folks online love speculating about adding the popular Jim Henson creatures to various franchises, and a potential version of Knives Out featuring Kermit or Miss Piggy has been a topic of discussion for some years. 

Unfortunately, Johnson seems to have no plans to actually make one. During a recent appearance on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast, Johnson manages to crush all of our dreams by insisting that there’s no way that a crossover between Blanc’s world and that of the felt-made puppets could realistically work. 

“On the internet, the notion of a Knives Out Muppet movie comes up a lot,” Johnson said. “I wanted to get you guys together here so that I could explain why that’s a bad idea.” 

The director goes on to lay out his theory in some detail. “I love and respect Muppet movies too much. The reality is, if you put Muppets in a Benoit Blanc movie, it would feel totally wrong because they would be getting murdered,” he said. “The alternative is to just stick Benoit Blanc into a Muppet movie, which admittedly would be very fun, but would kind of break the reality of what Blanc is.”

But, look, I think we can all agree that despite Johnson being the literal inventor of Blanc and his world, he is very wrong about this. There are plenty of Muppet-based or adjacent crimes that Blanc could find a reason to investigate, some of which (The Great Muppet Caper) have already been proven to work without breaking any sort of human or puppet reality. Plus, let’s not forget, most of The Muppet Movie actually involves Kermit getting chased by a guy who literally wants to turn him into frog legs. 

Surely, there’s room for a story in which Blanc has to prove Piggy didn’t commit a crime she’s falsely accused of, using the same sort of familiar mystery movie tropes and frankly ridiculous crime-solving scenarios that power the rest of the franchise. And I mean, if Michael Caine can make Muppets feel like believable parts of a Charles Dickens classic, there’s no reason to doubt that Craig would be able to do the same in a different genre. 

Not everything is terrible, though. While Johnson insists a puppet-based Knives Out is off the table, he’d apparently still really like to make a Muppet movie. 

“I would just love to do a regular awesome Muppet movie… I’ll do the Muppet caper, or my Muppet musical. Get together with Frank Oz and cook something,” said. “That would be amazing.”