(Credit: Netflix)

Daniel Craig has slipped into his trench coat and pulled up his sleeve to solve a “perfectly impossible crime” in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery trailer on Netflix, and we simply cannot keep calm.

Craig is back as detective Benoit Blanc for the third instalment of the Knives Out franchise, and Netflix finally released a trailer, offering viewers a one-way ticket into Rian Johnson’s world of whodunits.

As it turns out, even for Blanc, the murder mystery that’s at the centre of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, is a bit jaw-dropping. Not only does he believe it to be a “perfectly impossible crime,” but he also considers the case as something “beyond normal police work.” “This is something even I have not experienced,” he says in the trailer as the montage of footage takes over.

The challenges are not alone for those on screen. For Oscar-nominated filmmaker Johnson, Wake Up Dead Man was the “hardest script” he ever had to write. Described as a “case beyond belief,” the forthcoming crime outing with Craig and co. concerns the investigations surrounding an upstate New York parish in the aftermath of the murder of one of their own. The film follows as the ex-boxer-turned-priest Jud Duplenticy, played by Josh O’Connor, is sent over to assist firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks.

Wick’s dedicated army includes pious church lady Martha Delacroix, housekeeper Samson Holt, lawyer Vera Draven, budding politician Cy Draven, town doctor Nat Sharp, reclusive writer Lee Ross, and concert cellist Simon Vivane. The characters are portrayed by Glenn Close, Thomas Haden Church, Kerry Washington, Daryl McCormack, Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott, and Cailee Spaeny, respectively.

After a seemingly impossible murder shakes up the town, local police chief Geraldine Scott, played by Mila Kunis, turns to Blanc for assistance with the case, which goes beyond surface-level logic.

When O’Connor first read the script, he was completely in. Speaking to Tudum, he said, “What made me want to do the movie was the balance between comedy and Rian’s writing, which is always uncovering something that we don’t often see in a comedy.” But expect some massive “Scooby-Doo shit” in the Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery because this is far from an ordinary small-town murder mystery we’re looking at.

At Deadline’s Contenders London event in October, Johnson revealed that Wake Up Dead Man adheres to a more traditional structure than his previous instalments, Glass Onion and Knives Out. “This is how most Agatha Christie books work, where in the first act you meet all the suspects, you meet the protagonist, who’s not the detective. Then the murder happens, and the detective shows up.”

While the whodunit structure might be traditional, what’s not is the idea that a case could also look impossible for Blanc. But knowing him, he won’t disappoint. So, don’t forget to catch up with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery in theatres on November 26th, before it drops on Netflix on December 12th, just in time for Christmas.