Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim will both appear posthumously in Glass Onion
The long-time Broadway collaborators will both apparently show up as themselves in the Knives Out sequel
Both Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury—the latter of whom died this week, at the age of 96—will appear posthumously in Rian Johnson’s upcoming Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion. This is per Playbill, which reports that Netflix’s follow-up to Johnson’s star-studded mystery story will be the final screen credit for both Lansbury and her frequent collaborator Sondheim, who died in November of 2021.
Glass Onion was, of course, delayed pretty extensively by the pandemic; the film was finally shot in mid-2021, but is only set to arrive in theaters, for a limited run, on November 23, before making the move to Netflix proper in late December.
Details about the film’s plot are still being kept largely under wraps—it being a mystery story, and all that—but the Playbill report notes that Lansbury and Sondheim will both appear as themselves. The duo worked together at various points throughout their careers; maybe Benoit Blanc’s latest case will take him to a Sweeney Todd revival, with Lansbury reprising her role as Broadway’s first Mrs. Lovett?
Certainly, that would tie into the sense of theatricality that seems to run all through the Knives Out universe; this latest installment centers on a crew of old friends brought back together by their tech billionaire old pal; murder, presumably, ensues. The new film stars Craig, of course, plus Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom, Jr., Jessica Henwick, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, and Ethan Hawke.
Lansbury, of course, was no stranger to theatrical murder, from her film debut in 1944's Gaslight onward; we can only hope that Murder She Wrote’s J.B. Fletcher would have approved of Benoit Blanc’s approach to solving crimes, or his “donut hole” theory of mysterious goings-ons.