Knives Out filmmaker Rian Johnson has steadfastly denied the wishes of scores of internet users asking for a Benoit Blanc mystery in which Daniel Craig’s character is surrounded by Muppets. Sesame Street, however, has found a loophole.
The beloved children’s program released a segment Tuesday in which Benoit Blanc — or “Beignet Blanc,” as he’s referred to in the video — is himself rendered in Muppet form, called on to solve a mystery involving a purloined pie. The world’s greatest detective gets to the bottom of who ate Cookie Monster’s triple berry pie in “Forks Out.”
“I have arrived to this street of sesame, on a sunny day turned cloudy,” Beignet Blanc (voiced by Craig) announces in the video (watch it below). “We have a culinary culprit in our oven mitts, and to solve this confectionary conundrum, we must look right in front of our googly eyes.”
The video is also a bit of corporate synergy for Netflix. The streamer now has streaming rights to Sesame Street (episodes continue to air on PBS stations as well) and released the third Blanc film, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, in theaters on Nov. 26 (it begins streaming Dec. 12).
Johnson has shot down the idea of a Knives Out movie starring Muppets in the past. He said on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast that he respects both Muppet movies and his Knives Out films too much to mix them.
“The reality is, if you put Muppets in a Benoit Blanc movie, it would feel totally wrong because they would be getting murdered,” Johnson said. “The alternative is to just stick Benoit Blanc into a Muppet movie, which admittedly would be very fun, but would kind of break the reality of what Blanc is. Which is all to say: I would just love to do a regular awesome Muppet movie.”
