Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is getting an official director's commentary. The Rian Johnson film, which is a sequel to his own 2019 whodunit hit Knives Out, debuted on Netflix on December 23, 2022, exactly one month after its weeklong theatrical run during Thanksgiving week. The film follows the quirky but keen detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) on a brand new adventure to the isolated island owned by tech mogul Miles Bron (Edward Norton), where a terrible crime may be about to take place during a murder mystery party weekend he has organized.
Netflix took to Twitter to announce that a special director's commentary for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is arriving tomorrow, Thursday, February 23.
The tweet includes a line from Blanc himself, saying "I keep returning, in my mind, to the Glass Onion..." referring to the edifice at the center of the mystery. They also debuted a brand new poster for the film with director's commentary, which is dropping at 10:00 AM PST/1:00 PM EST.
Glass Onion May be Signaling an Upcoming Netflix Change
Netflix has been undergoing a lot of changes recently. In 2022, their subscriber numbers dropped quarter-on-quarter for the first time in quite a while. One of their responses to this was to announce that they would be pulling back on big-budget blockbusters like Glass Onion, Red Notice, and The Gray Man.
The streaming service seems to be experimenting with Glass Onion in a way that may indicate they're shifting the way they release those bigger movies in the future. For one thing, while most bigger Netflix movies do get a brief run in theaters for awards consideration, the Knives Out sequel was given pride of place. It even managed to rack up a box office gross of $13.3 million in its one week outing, a figure that is almost unheard of for a Netflix release, likely due to both the popularity of the original film and Netflix's increased promotion of the special run.
Similarly, while Netflix has done director's commentaries for some of their titles before, few have been given as much fanfare as this special release of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Should this bonus pay dividends in the same way as the initial theatrical run, Netflix may continue giving their big titles this kind of treatment. If they do that, that could be an indication that the company is returning to the tricks used by theatrical and home video distributors, signaling a huge sea change for the streamer.
Source: Netflix/Twitter