Muppet Fans Won’t be Placated by ‘Sesame Street’s ‘Knives Out’ Parody

Muppet fans have had to put up with a lot this year, but at least there’s now a Muppet-Knives Out mash-up for them to enjoy – unfortunately, it isn’t the one they’ve been asking for.

For years now, people on social media have been suggesting/demanding that director Rian Johnson make a Knives Out movie in which Daniel Craig’s gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc solves a murder mystery involving the Muppet characters. After all, the first Knives Out movie already featured Muppet legend Frank Oz in a small role. Would it have killed him to throw on the Miss Piggy puppet on his hand for a scene or two?

When the second Benoit Blanc mystery, Glass Onion, dropped in 2022, Johnson actually weighed in on the idea of a Muppet crossover. “It’s a joke that I thought was pretty brilliant, and I ended up really giving (it) some serious thought,” Johnson told Netflix Tudum. “As much as I take the murder mystery genre seriously, I take the genre of a Muppet movie seriously.” 

But he also speculated that the two franchises might not be compatible. “I think those two things have very different rules,” he argued. “You can either have a Benoit Blanc mystery that has Muppets in it, but they’ll feel out of place. Or you can have a Muppet movie that Benoit Blanc is in, but it’ll feel like a Muppet movie.” 

“I wouldn’t want to compromise either of them,” he added. “And I feel like in order to make it well and make it work, you’d have to make a choice and compromise one or the other. If I ever make a Muppet movie, I just want to make a great Muppet movie.”

While promoting the newest Knives Out-branded project, Wake Up Dead Man – which stars precisely zero Muppets – Johnson, again, poured cold water on the fan proposal. 

“On the Internet, the notion of a Knives Out Muppet movie comes up a lot,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, “and I wanted to get you guys together here so that I could explain why that’s a bad idea. It’s not a ‘bad idea,’ but I love and respect Muppet movies too much, and also Benoit Blanc movies. They’re so different. The reality is, if you put Muppets in a Benoit Blanc movie, it would feel totally wrong because they would be getting murdered.”

Although, to be fair, the Muppets have been involved in murder plots before. Back in season four of The Muppet Show, Statler and Waldorf literally went on a killing spree, only to be thwarted by Detective Kermit and Liza Minelli. 

And as Toughpigs.com pointed out, the holiday special A Muppet Family Christmas found the Swedish Chef attempting to slaughter Big Bird.

In the wake of this news, Sesame Street just released a new Knives Out parody, “Forks Out,” in which a puppet detective named “Beignet Blanc” investigates the case of Cookie Monster’s missing triple berry pie. 

The skit, which Johnson endorsed on social media, is clearly a lot of fun, and has made a number of people happy. But for others, it has seemingly done very little to scratch the itch of a potential Muppet-Blanc team-up. After all, the goal was to have a live action feature film in which Daniel Craig interacts with the Muppets, à la Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol, not merely a five minute all-puppet spoof.

If Craig won’t do it, can they at least try to get Liza Minelli back?