LONDON — Daniel Craig and co-stars of
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery lauded Angela Lansbury on Sunday as the whodunit sequel in
which the late actress makes a cameo closed the London Film Festival.
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Craig said 96-year-old Lansbury — who died on
Tuesday, after becoming a household name through playing a writer-detective in
Murder, She Wrote — had been “in my life all my life”.
“I mean, my favorite film was Bedknobs and
Broomsticks,” said the James Bond franchise legend, referring to the 1971
Disney hit film that Lansbury had starred in.
“The fact that she’s in our movie, we’re so blessed
— and also what an incredible life she had,” Craig, 54, told reporters at a
press conference alongside other “Glass Onion” filmmakers ahead of its European
premiere.
Director Rian
Johnson said Lansbury’s appearance in his follow-up to 2019 murder mystery
“Knives Out”, alongside one by the late Broadway icon Stephen Sondheim who died
last November, followed brief filming visits he made to their homes.
“Besides just the honor of having them in the
movie... just being able to have 10 minutes with each of them, to tell them
what their work has meant to me was really, really special,” he added.
‘Subverting the genre’
“Glass Onion”, which
features a star-studded ensemble cast that also includes Edward Norton, Kate
Hudson and Janelle Monae, will hit cinemas for just a week next month before
streaming on Netflix from late December.
Following the success of the first film — which
netted more than $300 million at the global box office, despite a budget of
just $40 million — Craig will also return as Southern gentleman sleuth Benoit
Blanc for a third time.
Johnson, who previously directed the divisive
blockbuster Star Wars: The Last Jedi, reiterated that his budding new franchise
stems from his love for prolific British crime writer
Agatha Christie.
He said his contemporary take on the whodunit, which
in this installment include Norton as a vainglorious tech billionaire and
Hudson as a vacuous fashioniasta, tries to emulate her “subversive” approach a
century ago.
“She was putting twists on it that, if you did them
today, people would say ‘that’s very subversive, you’re subverting the genre’,”
said the American director, who has laced his efforts with considerable satire
and humor.
“If Agatha Christie were writing right now, she’d
have tech billionaires and she’d have these characters. She wasn’t writing
period pieces, she was writing exactly to her time, and all of the things that
we think of as murder mystery tropes were people in society,” he said.
‘Double the laughs’
Norton appeared to need
little persuading to take on the fictional role of online app founder Miles
Bron, with most of the movie taking place on his ludicrously lavish private
Greek island as he hosts wealthy friends.
“What’s not to love about roasting the tech
illuminati?” the award-winning actor and filmmaker said with a smile, noting
there was “abundant feedstock” for his character in contemporary life.
“When you can see the times you’re living in and you
can see the foibles — not just the puffed up characters that we see in the
world around us, but even ourselves — it doubles the laugh, it doubles the
pleasure,” Norton added. “That’s why it was so wonderful that Rian (Johnson)
found some new targets. It’s also fun.”
The filmmakers in
London for the screening, which follows a world premiere in Toronto last month,
were at pains not to reveal any giveaway spoilers about the twisting plot.
Now in its 66th year, the 12-day
London Film Festival opened on October 5 with a new musical screen adaptation of Roald
Dahl’s classic Matilda. It also premiered Netflix’s animated version of the
classic Pinocchio, directed by Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro, on Saturday.
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