The third installment of the Knives Out films, Wake Up Dead Man, is now in theaters. But don’t feel bad if you didn’t notice. It’s an extremely limited release in just a tiny handful of theaters before it starts its Netflix run tomorrow on December 12. It’s not an ideal arrangement for a movie with big commercial possibilities, and writer-director Rian Johnson made his unhappiness known in public comments right out of the gate.
In this, Johnson was prescient, because Wake Up Dead Man has done anemic business so far compared to the first two films of the franchise, Knives Out and Glass Onion. All this despite very strong reviews. This is partly explained by some brutal yet increasingly typical facts of Netflix theatrical releases:
Netflix was unable to book the top three circuits — AMC, Regal, and Cinemark — who were insisting on a 30-day theatrical window like Glass Onion’s, not a 17-day theatrical window. Hence, Wake Up Dead Man wound up playing the arthouse Alamo, Landmark, and mom-and-pop-circuits. In addition, the movie didn’t get a theatrical P&A campaign like Glass Onion did. Johnson himself took to social media and, in answering a fan, expressed, “I’m as frustrated as you that it’s not everywhere.”
Wake Up Dead Man joins other recent Netflix movies such as Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Kathryn Bigelow’s House of Dynamite, and Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly in barely there seventeen-day releases in arthouse theaters followed by Netflix streaming premieres a few days later. But it’s especially notable in the case of Wake Up Dead Man, which is the third film in a hugely popular franchise. In spite of the comparative lack of publicity and with the knowledge that it’d be available for streaming in a matter of days, Wake Up Dead Man still managed to sell out theaters in over five-hundred locations. The movie also garnered rave reviews from critics, racking up a sterling 92 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
I was a bit surprised at…
Auteur: Eileen Jones
