Rian Johnson’s ‘Knives Out’ Pay Revealed

Film maker Rian Johnson is reeling in the returns from his Knives Out movies according to company filings which reveal how much he was paid to write and direct the third instalment in the series.

Johnson’s directorial debut came in 2005 with the neo-noir mystery film Brick but he didn’t get his biggest break until 2017 when he helmed Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Although the movie grossed $1.3 billion it was Knives Out that made him a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood.

Driven by a desire to bring mid-twentieth century mystery movies up to date, Johnson came up with the idea for Knives Out. He combined the crime stories of Agatha Christie with the thrills of Hitchcock movies and added a dash of the humour found in classic 1985 whodunnit Clue.

Johnson started planning the story in the mid-2000s but put it on hold whilst he worked on The Last Jedi. After the premiere of the sci-fi film he wrote the Knives Out screenplay in six to seven months and his persistence paid off. The movie was released in 2019 and grossed a total of $312.9 million. Audiences were captivated by its twisting story and curious casting with Bond star Daniel Craig in the lead role of Benoit Blanc, a dapper detective with a southern drawl.

Knives Out was nominated for three Golden Globes, a British Academy Film Award and an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The movie was so successful that over the following it came to the attention of Netflix which was on the lookout for new content to cater to audiences who were stuck in lockdown. In 2021 the streaming giant reportedly paid north of $400 million for the rights to two sequels in the same style leading to the equally critically-acclaimed Glass Onion in 2022.

That was followed by Wake Up Dead Man which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last month and then headlined the London Film Festival. A limited theatrical release will follow in November before the film hits Netflix on December 12.

Unlike its predecessors, it was shot in the United Kingdom at Leavesden Studios just outside London and on location in leafy suburbs which doubled for upstate New York. It lifts the curtain on its cost and much more.

Studios filming in the U.K. get a reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country provided that at least 10% of their core costs are incurred there. In order to demonstrate this to the authorities, studios set up separate companies to produce each film in the U.K. and they are obliged to file legally-binding financial statements.

Wake Up Dead Man was made by Sweet Beans Productions which is owned by Johnson and his producer business partner Ram Bergman. The company is named after a comment by Blanc in the first Knives Out movie and as this author reported in the New York Post yesterday, its latest financial statements show that by September 30, 2024 its costs came to $192.7 million (£144.1 million) which was “in line with the production budget.”

A $41 million (£30.6 million) reimbursement then brought the net expenses for the film down to $151.7 million which was funded by Netflix. There were no surprises for the streamer as the terms of the reimbursement say that the financial statements have to show the movie’s entire costs, not just the money spent in the U.K. Studios aren’t allowed to hide costs elsewhere either as the terms also state that there can only be one production company for each film.

One of the biggest expenses shown in the financial statements is the $5.9 million (£4.4 million) spent on the production team which came to a monthly average of 61 people. That doesn’t include freelancers, contractors and temporary workers as they aren’t listed as employees on the books of U.K. companies but often represent the majority of the crew on a film shoot.

Movie stars tend to be paid through companies they own which are contracted to provide their services so their costs aren’t usually shown on the financial statements. It’s a different story for the director and producer because they are the two sole directors of Sweet Beans Productions.

The financial statements of U.K. companies are obliged to show the pay of the highest paid members of the management team which in this case is just comprised of Bergman – the producer – and Johnson the director and writer of the movie. The filings state that “the highest paid director received £3,947,473 [$5.3 million] and £21,533,468 [$28.8 million] for writer and director services respectively.” The revelations don’t stop there as the filings add that “remuneration of £15,375,409 [$20.6 million] was paid to a director during the year for producer services.”

If these sums seem higher than expected there may be good reason for that. Directors are often paid a share of the box office in addition to a salary but the opportunity to do this with Wake Up Dead Man was limited by Netflix’s distribution model. The movie will play in a select number of theaters in the United States and will only run for a two-week period. This is designed to drive buzz before it hits Netflix and it also enables its productions to be in the running for awards which require a theatrical release. It isn’t a dream ticket for everyone.

Last year industry title Puck claimed that at the TIFF 2022 premiere of Glass Onion, Craig told Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos that the standing ovation from the audience was evidence that the film should get a larger and longer theatrical release.

Sarandos reportedly replied that it is “not our model” causing Craig to claim that the model is broken. Craig’s view was endorsed by a report by Deadline which claimed that Glass Onion could have made more than $600 million worldwide at the box office if Netflix had given it a full-length theatrical run and marketing push. It only ended up making a measly $13.3 million setting a low bar for Wake Up Dead Man to beat.

The movie is the last under Johnson’s deal with Netflix though the series seems set to live on. During a recent talk in London Johnson said that he will continue making Knives Out films “as long as audiences want to keep seeing it and Daniel and I are still having fun making them and still feel like we can come up with stuff that feels not just fresh, but a fresh challenge for us.” Johnson’s blockbuster payday gives him a tremendous incentive and, as the end result shows, he is anything but complacent.

Additional reporting by Christian Sylt