Also in attendance was the star of Wake Up Dead Man, Daniel Craig, and Johnson recalled a behind-the-scenes Star Wars moment when he was more eagle-eyed than most about Craig’s acting prowess, even back then.
“When I was writing Episode VIII, we were watching dailies, because [J.J. was] shooting VII,” Johnson told the audience. “One day… it was a scene with Daisy [Ridley] where she does the Force mind control on a Stormtrooper and gets him to unlock her things. The daily came up, the Stormtrooper came up, the Stormtrooper didn’t say anything—just walked across the room to her.”
Johnson then replicated his physical reaction to the random Stormtrooper, saying that he was moved to ask who the actor was. “Pablo [Hidalgo] at Lucasfilm was like, ‘I think it’s just a stunt dude in a Stormtrooper thing,’ and I go, ‘No—that’s a real actor, just from the way they walked across the stage.’”
Even though his thoughts were dismissed at the time with a “no, dude,” Johnson noted that Hidalgo returned to him later and confirmed he was right: “Yeah, that’s Daniel Craig.”
In Wake Up Dead Man, detective Benoit Blanc returns to investigate the mystery of a murdered priest when one of his colleagues becomes a suspect. The film is set to explore themes of faith and reason tied to a crime framed as potentially miraculous.
Wake Up Dead Man will release in theaters on November 26. It will stream globally on Netflix beginning December 12.
