A new day, a new bit of casting news about Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the upcoming Rian Johnson film in which Daniel Craig will, for the third time, play detective Benoit Blanc. As of Tuesday, the film’s lineup (of suspects?) included Andrew Scott (Ripley), Josh O’Connor (Challengers), and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla).
Now we’ve got three more actors to peer closely at, looking for clues. Kerry Washington (Scandal), Glenn Close (Damages), and Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye, pictured above) are the latest trio to join Johnson’s next murder mystery. Deadline exclusively reported the news on Washington and Renner, noting, of course, that this is Renner’s first feature film role since his early-2023 snowplow accident.
But there’s another notable thing about Renner joining the cast of this particular film. In the second Knives Out mystery, Glass Onion, a particular hot sauce serves as a running gag. Or perhaps I should say a Renning gag, given that said (fictional) hot sauce is Jeremy Renner’s Renning Hot.
Jeremy Renner does not, in real life, have a hot sauce brand. (He did have an app. And also Rennervations.) But one does have to wonder whether, in the upcoming trip to the Knives Out Cinematic Universe, he will be playing the fictional creator of the previously appearing fictional hot sauce, or if his character will be something else entire. No one is saying; all plot and character details are still top secret.
Wake Up Dead Man is expected to arrive on Netflix in 2025.
