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2025 is going to be a big year for Netflix movies, and it looks like the streaming platform is saving its most exciting feature releases until last. At the back end of the year, right around the holiday season which typically sees small-screen viewing figures hit their annual peak, Netflix is going to drop two of its biggest ever film premieres. It’s no coincidence that both of these movies belong to the same genre. Their top billing on the world’s biggest streamer is part of a wider trend that’s revived the murder mystery genre by taking it in brilliant new directions.
Wake Up Dead Man, the third installment of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series, and The Thursday Murder Club, the first screen adaptation of Richard Osman’s best-selling novel series, are just the latest murder mystery big hitters to receive star treatment from Hollywood. The trend they’re following began back in 2017, and was picked up by major streaming platforms at the start of this decade. Now, everyone from James Bond star Daniel Craig to comedy legend Steve Martin and teen pop sensation Selena Gomez is in on the act, and by 2023 even Hollywood director Steven Spielberg had joined The Thursday Murder Club.
Knives Out 3 And The Thursday Murder Club Are The Latest Revivals Of The Murder Mystery Genre
But They’re The Biggest Releases Yet In This Broader Genre Trend
The return of Craig’s Benoit Blanc in Wake Up Dead Man follows Netflix’s phenomenal success with the first Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, released on the platform around Christmas of 2022. Meanwhile, Knives Out itself was released in cinemas back in 2019 to massive audiences and rave reviews, which confirmed to studio executives that they were onto a winner with projects aiming to revive the murder mystery genre.
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Johnson’s movie series consciously pays homage to classic works of the genre and its most recognizable tropes. In this way, its success demonstrates beyond doubt that traditional murder mysteries once again have mass appeal for both big and small-screen audiences, as long as they’re presented in innovative and exciting forms.
Osman’s story is also set in a retirement village, which follows a common trope among the current trend of mystery genre revivals.
This balance between nostalgia for the murder mystery genre and creative innovation is what those adapting The Thursday Murder Club will be hoping to achieve. They include Home Alone director Chris Columbus, Steven Spielberg on production duties, and a raft of A-listers fronted by Helen Mirren and Daniel Craig’s fellow Bond actor Pierce Brosnan.
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Osman’s story is also set in a retirement village, which follows a common trope among the current trend of mystery genre revivals on streaming. Ted Danson’s Netflix sitcom Man on the Inside features an amateur detective infiltrating a retirement community, while two of the three main characters in Steve Martin’s Hulu series Only Murders in the Building are essentially retirees.
Kenneth Branagh’s Murder On The Orient Express Started This Trend In 2017
Before Branagh’s Box-Office Triumph The Genre Appeared To Have Gone Stale
Tracing this trend of movies and TV shows reviving the murder mystery genre back to its origins, it’s clear that the success of Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express in 2017 has a lot to do with it. Branagh certainly went out on a limb with the project, directing and starring in the fourth different English-language version of Agatha Christie’s classic Hercule Poirot novel.
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For a start, it was initially hard to imagine Branagh himself as the legendary detective, especially after another British actor, David Suchet, had made the character his own during a 13-season, 70-episode run of Poirot mysteries on UK television. Then there was the danger of inviting a host of Hollywood stars such as Penélope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench and Willem Dafoe to dress up in period costumes for a highly-stylized genre piece. There was every chance that Branagh’s movie was going to be a spectacular, expensive failure, putting the final nail in the coffin of a genre which appeared to have gone stale in cinematic terms.
On the contrary, though, Murder on the Orient Express was a triumph, making its money back seven times over. The movie received mixed reviews, due to its self-conscious extravagance and Branagh’s deliberately over-the-top portrayal of Poirot, intended to celebrate the eccentricity of Christie’s genre storytelling. Yet it was precisely these aspects of the film that proved a hit with audiences, demonstrating to movie and TV bosses that classic murder mysteries could be on their way back in a big way.
Steve Martin’s Only Murders In The Building Put Murder Mysteries On The Streaming Map
It Was The First Major Murder Mystery Series Made For Streaming
Three years on from Branagh’s first Christie adaptation, and a year after Knives Out became a box-office smash, comedian Steve Martin finally got the chance to make a murder mystery series he’d been sitting on for almost a decade. Admittedly, Martin’s comeback show Only Murders in the Building wasn’t the first new mystery series to make it big in the last decade, with the BBC’s adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike becoming a sleeper hit on Cinemax around the turn of the decade.
But Only Murder in the Building was the first big murder mystery show made for streaming, and its unprecedented success proved to major platforms that this genre revival wasn’t just the preserve of the big screen. Incidentally, C.B. Strike has begun to pick up a head of steam on Max, HBO’s streaming platform, only this year, off the back of Only Murders in the Building and other similar shows.
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What’s more, Cormoran Strike is more of a hard-boiled detective than a classic murder mystery protagonist. Like Branagh’s Poirot movies and Johnson’s Knives Out, on the other hand, Only Murders in the Building indulges in the fun and fanciful elements of traditional murder mysteries, whilst updating the genre for the true-crime podcast generation.
This Trend Is A Callback To Classic TV Murder Mysteries Like Poirot And Murder, She Wrote
Those Reviving The Murder Mystery Genre Are Aware Of Its Traditions
A key aspect of today’s best murder mystery revivals is their self-awareness, which allows them to poke fun at themselves and the genre with a knowing wink to the audience. Nevertheless, this self-awareness is also a mark of respect for the genre’s traditions. Many fundamental elements of Knives Out, Only Murders in the Building and The Thursday Murder Club pay homage to the tropes of classic murder mysteries. It’s not just the literary great Agatha Christie they’re referencing, either, but seminal TV murder mysteries like Angela Lansbury’s Murder, She Wrote.
It’s partly the affection that these new movies and TV shows demonstrate for the genre itself that wins the hearts of so many millions of viewers around the world. The murder mystery genre never really went out of fashion, and Osman’s novel series has proved that it’s more popular than ever. As long as the mystery is well-written and handled with care, there’ll always be an audience for it. Netflix will be hoping that, in streaming terms at least, 2025 will see a bigger audience for the genre than ever before.
