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Netflix premieres Rian Johnson’s critically acclaimed Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery this Friday and audiences are guaranteed to be entertained by the film, which features an eclectic ensemble of talent that includes Daniel Craig, Kate Hudson and Janelle Monáe.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Production Stills

Source: Courtesy Netflix / Netflix

Glass Onion Director Says Ed Norton’s Tech Billionaire Character Isn’t Based On Anyone Specific

Craig reprises his Knives Out role as detective Benoit Blanc. This time Blanc is summoned to a private estate on a Greek island owned by billionaire Miles Bron. It turns out he’s the only new face among the select group of guests invited, which include Miles’ former business partner Andi Brand, current Connecticut governor Claire Debella, cutting-edge scientist Lionel Toussaint, fashion designer and former model Birdie Jay and her conscientious assistant Peg, and influencer Duke Cody and his sidekick girlfriend Whiskey. When someone turns up dead, everyone is a suspect.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Production Stills

Source: Courtesy Netflix / Netflix

The colorful cast offers up some incredible performances, but Monáe and Norton are definitely the standouts. With Elon Musk’s latest antics still percolating the news cycle, we spoke with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Rian Johnson about whether he had any particular eccentric billionaire in mind when he wrote Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

“It’s been pretty wild in the past few months, the analogues to what’s in the movie,” Johnson told Global Grind. “I wrote the movie a few years ago. When I was writing the part that Edward Norton plays, obviously there are real-world analogues, but I started finding it really unuseful to think too specifically about any one person. It got really boring really fast the second it was just making fun of somebody.”

“What was more interesting to me was the tension,” Johnson continued. “If it’s a villain, whatever the character is, I feel like to write a character well, you gotta figure out who or what your relationship is to them. Sometimes what you can see in them, and sometimes what you feel yourself.”

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Production Stills

Source: Courtesy Netflix / Netflix

“For me what was more interesting was thinking about this species of a tech billionaire, and our relationship with them in society,” Rian Johnson told Global Grind. “And how there’s a couple of layers, there’s a really American thing that we all have. I know I can speak to myself, I have, on a gut level. Even if you call them an idiot there’s a deep thing in all of us that just instinctively mistakes wealth for competence or wisdom. Or as much as we want to call them morons, we also want to think of them as Willy Wonka too.”

“Part of the tension of us in a society, where we both want to quote tweet and insult these people, but also deep down inside, there’s a part of us that’s like, ‘Maybe don’t bet against them, maybe they won’t take us up to Mars on the great glass elevator at the end of the day.’ And that tension I think was much more interesting to me, to dig into and explore with Miles and his relationship with the whole group, who’s kind of under his umbrella the way we all are.”

“I get on Twitter every single day,” Johnson continued. “The technology we use, the internet, everything. As much as we love dinging these people we’re also living in this power structure underneath them. There’s an amount of complicity there with all of us. That was interesting stuff to me.”

Great points were definitely made. We also love that Rian Johnson referred to the eccentric billionaire type as a SPECIES. But it works. Literally google the term “eccentric billionaire” and you will find several different lists of some of the most wealthy and at times haphazard people in history! Norton’s Bron fits right in — but we don’t want to spoil anything. You’ll have to watch for yourself.

Check out the trailer for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery below:

If you had a billionaire buddy who beckoned you to Greece, would you go without asking any questions? Would you be worried for your life? We’re betting that after watching Glass Onion you definitely might think twice.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is currently streaming on Netflix.