Rian Johnson on Viral Push for Benoit Blanc and Muppets Movie
Written by SOURCE on January 3, 2023
You’ve heard the demands. Now hear the (potentially disappointing but understandably so) response from the man himself.
Indeed, as you’ve no doubt stumbled across in recent days, there have been some seriously passionate discussions across social media regarding a growing desire among a number of Knives Out and Glass Onion fans for the investigatorial prowess of Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig) to be brought together with the limitless cinematic joys of Jim Henson’s Muppets crew.
Director Rian Johnson has now addressed these calls for a collaborative Blanc x Muppets endeavor, notably revealing that he gave the idea “some serious thought” but isn’t (at least for now) convinced of its ability to work in a respectful manner for both franchises.
“It’s a joke that I thought was pretty brilliant, and I ended up really giving [it] some serious thought,” Johnson told Netflix’s Tudum in a recently published feature. “As much as I take the murder mystery genre seriously, I take the genre of a Muppet movie seriously.”
As Johnson explained, the two respective cinematic worlds boast “very different rules” that would complicate a successful fusion.
“You can either have a Benoit Blanc mystery that has Muppets in it, but they’ll feel out of place,” he said. “Or you can have a Muppet movie that Benoit Blanc is in, but it’ll feel like a Muppet movie.”
In short, Johnson added, he wouldn’t want to “compromise either of them.”
The hopeful Muppets discourse was also briefly addressed in a recently released promo clip featuring Johnson with members of the Glass Onion cast, Craig among them, as seen below.
Johnson, however, appears more immediately receptive to the possibility of one day putting together a Blanc-focused holiday special. The director offered up a fittingly all-caps reaction to such a proposal on Twitter this week, although what’s confirmed to be next up in the Blanc series (as previously reported) is a third feature film.
