Knives Out 3 Release on Netflix Is Actually Bad News for the Whole Franchise
With no Netflix on the horizon, all the movies could’ve been doing so much better.
The Knives Out franchise’s next installment titled Wake Up Dead Man is now officially in the works, as the movie already got its star-studded cast and is set to start the production this month, but the movie’s upcoming release next year isn’t as exciting as it seems.
Netflix has surely heard its audience’s prayers and is now set to bring all of its new flicks straight to the streaming platform, and, given how successful Knives Out’s first part was during its theatrical release, a direct digital drop may not be a blessing, but rather a curse in disguise.
Released back in 2019, the franchise’s eponymous first movie initially hit the screens in cinemas across the world and completely blew the moviegoers away. With a relatively modest budget of only $40 million, Knives Out became a huge box office hit, grossing around $312 million, but then Netflix got in the way.
Also blown away by the film’s raving success, the streaming giant seized a benefitting opportunity and got the rights for streaming two more sequels that would follow Knives Out. The first, titled Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, came out in 2022 and received a very weird release as it initially went straight to cinemas, but having spent only one week there, it landed on Netflix soon after.
The upcoming third installment so far doesn’t show any signs of repeating the same mistake, but it actually gets something even worse as it’s coming straight to Netflix with no theatrical release at all.
The franchise’s seemingly profitable partnership with the world’s biggest streaming platform instead appears to be a huge mistake given that Knives Out’s sequels are completely deprived of the opportunity to prove that they’re able to perform in theaters as well as the original movie did.
With the audience’s tendency to ignore everything that’s now playing in theaters knowing that within weeks the same flicks will arrive at the streaming for everyone to watch at home on their couches, Netflix does seem to have a solid reason to drag its projects out of theaters as soon as possible.
Still, Knives Out could’ve had a much bigger piggy bank that probably would allow Rian Johnson to come up with even more sequels in the future, but instead Wake Up Dead Man is doomed to have nothing more but just the streaming viewership.