Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) on Netflix
PG-1320252h 25mComedyMysteryThriller
Jud Duplenticy, a one-time boxer and now a Catholic priest, is assigned to a parish in upstate New York under Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. A killing leaves Jud the chief suspect.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.3/10260,198 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
After punching a fellow deacon, Jud Duplenticy, a former boxer, is posted as a priest to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a parish in upstate New York run by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. The monsignor's grandfather, Reverend Prentice Wicks, had gathered a small fortune that went missing, and the monsignor's mother Grace, who hoped to inherit it, wrecked the church. Jud objects to the way Wicks runs the parish; his preaching has emptied the pews. On Good Friday, Wicks collapses in a closet beside the chancel, a knife made from a red devil's-head lamp finial in his back. Jud had threatened him, and the day before he had carried off a finial of the same kind from a bar, so the police name him the suspect. Chief Geraldine Scott calls in detective Benoit Blanc, who recruits Jud and believes him innocent.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On March 31, 2021, it was reported that Netflix bought the rights to two Knives Out sequels for over $400 million, a deal struck well before Wake Up Dead Man was released.
- Daniel Craig was paid $100 million for his involvement in the two Knives Out sequels, and he had acknowledged interest in returning to the role early on in development.
- Glenn Close was "really hit hard" by both COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus while making the film, and the illness meant that by that point she had been able to take part in only two days of filming.
- The film's title comes from a phrase in the folk song "Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos", and writer-director Rian Johnson notes it is also "kind of" derived from U2's song of the same name.
- The church exteriors, set in New York state, were shot in England at the Church of the Holy Innocents in Epping Forest, and further exterior footage was filmed in Cold Spring, New York, standing in for Chimney Rock.
- Rian Johnson called the screenplay "definitely the hardest script I've ever written" and spent over eight months contemplating ideas before starting to write, wanting to explore the film's religious themes with nuance.
