Jeremy Renner has said he received a “lot of support” and felt “welcomed” back to acting when he started filming the third Knives Out film.
Written, produced, and directed by Rian Johnson, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery sees Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc return to finding a killer after a seemingly impossible murder rocks a religious town.
This is the first film for Renner since his near-fatal 2023 accident when he was crushed by his seven-tonne snowplow while helping clear snow from the driveways of his neighbours. The Hawkeye star had to be airlifted to hospital where he was treated for severe injuries, including a collapsed lung and more than 30 broken bones.
“It’s a lot of support, man. It’s lovely to have it. There’s such a communion and camaraderie that happens, especially on a movie like this,” Renner told Variety’s TIFF Studio, on being back at work and doing so with a large, ensemble cast.
“This is not even really a movie to me, it’s more like a stage play. We’re always together, we’re always in each other’s faces, even when we’re acting. When you have 15 people on a camera, you spend a lot of time with them. It reminds me of doing a play. It feels good to be back and welcomed back to the job that I love, with really great people.”
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third in the Knives Out series, also stars Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, osh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack and Thomas Haden Church.
Johnson, who also helmed the first two Knives Out films, has described Wake Up Dead Man as Blanc’s “most personal journey yet”.
“He’s forced to engage with the case – and with himself – in a way that’s completely new,” Johnson told Netflix’s Tudum. “It’s more similar to the first Knives Out in that it gets back to the real origins of the genre, which predate Agatha Christie, going back to Edgar Allan Poe. It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, so it’s funny and fun, but it’s set in an old stone church, there are lots of graveyards.”
In June last year, Renner opened up about his reticence to take on challenging acting roles during his recovery from the accident.
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“I just don’t have the energy for it,” Renner said on the Smartless podcast. “I don’t have the fuel. I have so much fuel to put into this reality, this body, all this stuff. I can’t just go play make-believe right now. Because that takes a lot of time to get right here every day just so I can have a positive thought, so I can progress, so I can always keep growing.
“Because I’m to do, like, f***ing fiction? I’m still trying to live in reality, I’m trying to live. So it was a hard line for me to cross,” he added. “It was a big stretch. It was very, very challenging for me mentally to get over that hump.”
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is set to hit theatres on 26 November and be released for streaming on 12 December.
