Benoit Blanc Knives Out Muppets - Netflix Tudum

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    Could Benoit Blanc Meet the Muppets?

    It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to meet the... suspects?
    Dec. 23, 2022

The internet loves a lot of things: arguing over how to pronounce “gif,” videos of dogs and cats who are friends with each other, bodega discourse. But perhaps above all else, the internet really loves adding the Muppets to existing movies.

Over the years, Jim Henson’s famous felt-puppet ensemble has appeared in a variety of genre films: They’ve been at the center of capersswashbucklers and even Christmas carols. One thing they’ve never had to deal with? A murder mystery. And people want it. Bad. Specifically, they want the Muppets to face off with Daniel Craig’s world-famous ascot-wearing detective, Benoit Blanc.

Fortunately, Blanc creator (and Knives Out/Glass Onion writer-director) Rian Johnson is reading your tweets. “It’s a joke that I thought was pretty brilliant, and I ended up really giving [it] some serious thought,” Johnson tells Tudum. “As much as I take the murder mystery genre seriously, I take the genre of a Muppet movie seriously.” 

Lest you forget, Johnson actually has some legit Muppet pedigree. The man directed Muppet icon Frank Oz (twice!). If anyone is capable of bringing these two worlds together, it’s the filmmaker who brought puppet Yoda back to the big screen in The Last Jedi

Alas, after some serious thought, Johnson believes it might just be a fool’s errand. “I think those two things have very different rules,” he says. “You can either have a Benoit Blanc mystery that has Muppets in it, but they’ll feel out of place. Or you can have a Muppet movie that Benoit Blanc is in, but it’ll feel like a Muppet movie.” 

In other words, Muppet mystery fans, for the foreseeable future, Blanc will be investigating humans rather than frogs, Fozzie Bear and whatever the hell Gonzo is. “I wouldn’t want to compromise either of them,” Johnson says. “And I feel like in order to make it well and make it work, you’d have to make a choice and compromise one or the other. If I ever make a Muppet movie, I just want to make a great Muppet movie.”

Hypothetically, let’s take this thought experiment to its natural conclusion. If Blanc were to take on what we’ll call “The Case of the Muppet Murder,” who does Johnson think would be the culprit? 

“I can’t reveal that,” Johnson says with a laugh. “What if I do it someday?” 

Glass Onion hits Netflix on Dec. 23.

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