Daniel Craig tells of filming new Knives Out movie in Greece during lockdown at London Film Festival
Whodunnit movie Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has closed this year’s London Film Festival with stars telling Sky News how pleased they are the industry is back in full swing following the pandemic.
The follow-up to the 2019 hit Knives Out sees Daniel Craig reprising his role as detective Benoit Blanc.
“It’s just wonderful to be here at the London Film Festival on the closing night,” the Bond star told Sky News.
“Especially with the standard of film this year, which has been so amazing – to be in that number is just exceptional.”
The rest of Glass Onion’s ensemble cast, including Edward Norton, Kate Hudson and Janelle Monae are new to the franchise.
The movie was shot partly in Greece during the pandemic, which meant the cast grew close as they were forced to spend time together.
“I mean, it was an amazing experience,” Craig said.
“We were under lockdown, so we were kind of restricted in our movements so we couldn’t really go very many places.
“It was about 150 degrees in the shade, but, you know, those are high class problems.”
Janelle Monae is new to the franchise
Kate Hudson, who plays a former supermodel turned designer, told Sky News the cast got on brilliantly.
“It was good fun, with a lot of hard work in between, you know?” she said.
“But we were a good work-hard, play-hard cast, so we were very well suited for each other, we had really good times.
“It was COVID, so it kind of forced us to have to play with each other for three months, so we ended up getting really close and it was really fun.”
The film is screening in London following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Both are fully in-person events this year, and Hudson says she’s “more than delighted” about that.
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“It feels like we’ve been, if you’re in the industry, it’s like we’ve been starved for it,” she said.
“It’s so important to celebrate film and all of the great artists that have really worked their entire lives to be able to bring art to people through cinema.
“And so these festivals are… I just love them, I love being a part of them and it’s nice for everybody to be back in the theatre.”
Writer and director Rian Johnson also brought the first Knives Out to the London Film Festival three years ago.
He told Sky News that assembling the cast for the follow-up wasn’t easy on paper, but worked out very well.
“I feel so incredibly lucky this gang of actors signed on board for this – I mean everyone’s so busy these days, it’s always hard getting a group of people to commit to coming out to do something,” Johnson explained.
“But if you had told me when I started writing the group that we would get, I would get very nervous and probably not be able to finish writing.
“But I mean, everybody – the fact that we got to work with Kathryn Hahn, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae, it’s absolutely kind of a director’s dream, made my job very easy.”
Kate Hudson plays a former supermodel turned designer
With early reviews for the film very positive, attention now turns to the third.
In 2021, Netflix paid for two Knives Out sequels in a deal reported to be worth almost £400m.
And Johnson says he and Craig are very happy to keep going – admitting they have a great deal of fun on set.
“There is a lot of giggling that happens between us when we’re shooting, I mean, that’s the whole reason we’re here,” he said.
“That’s the real reason we’re keeping making these things is because on the first one we had so much fun together and just got along so well, and on this one it felt like it was maybe even more fun.
“So we’ll see – as long as these keep being fun and as long as we feel like we can find a different thing to do each time to keep surprising the audience and keep it fresh, we’ll keep making these.”
Audiences in the UK will have to wait a little longer for Glass Onion, though – it’s not out in cinemas here until November, and will be on Netflix the following month.
Video footage has shown the moment singer and actress Ariana Grande was accosted by a fan at a film premiere.
Ms Grande was in Singapore for the debut of Wicked: For Good when the incident unfolded on Thursday.
The video captured the moment the fan scaled the barricade and pushed past photographers towards Ms Grande.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
He then threw his arms around her, before co-star Cynthia Erivo intervened and security swoops in to stop him.
The man, now identified as Johnson Wen, 26, is reportedly a notorious red carpet crasher.
Wen, who has since been charged with being a public nuisance, goes by the nickname Pyjama Man, and gloated as he shared footage of the intrusion online.
“Dear Ariana Grande, Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You,” he wrote on Instagram.
Pic: tacotrvck_vb/X/via REUTERS
In video stories posted to the site beforehand, he was seen at the Universal Studios venue, revealing his intentions.
In one, he said: “I feel like I’m in a dream, that’s my best friend, Ariana Grande, and I’m gonna meet her. I’ve been dreaming about that.”
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The Australian has ambushed several performers on stage, according to reports, including Katy Perry and The Chainsmokers at concerts in Sydney, and The Weeknd in Melbourne.
It has been reported that Wen intends to plead guilty and that he could face a fine of more than £1,000.
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo at the London premiere for Wicked: For Good
Ms Grande took a moment to gather herself in the aftermath of the intrusion, visibly shocked by the incident.
She didn’t address the incident on her own Instagram, but shared some photos with the caption “thank you, Singapore”, adding “we love you”.
The singer battled post-traumatic stress disorder after her 2017 concert in Manchester was bombed, leaving 22 people dead.
She told Vogue in 2018: “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe, tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing.
“I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well. Time is the biggest thing.
“I feel like I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience – like I shouldn’t even say anything. I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”
In the same interview she also addressed her own anxiety, saying she has “always” had it.
Ms Grande plays Galinda Upland in Wicked: For Good, the character who becomes Glinda the Good Witch. Ms Erivo plays Elphaba, the character who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.
The film is released in UK cinemas on 21 November.
Entertainment
A third of daily music uploads are AI-generated and 97% of people can’t tell the difference, says report
Do you care if the music you’re listening to is artificially generated?
That question – once the realm of science fiction – is becoming increasingly urgent.
An AI-generated country track, Walk My Walk, is currently sitting at number one on the US Billboard chart of digital sales and a new report by streaming platform Deezer has revealed the sheer scale of AI production in the music industry.
Deezer’s AI-detection system found that around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are now uploaded every day, accounting for 34% of all daily uploads.
File pic: iStock
The true number is most likely higher, as Deezer’s AI-detection system does not catch every AI-generated track. Nor does this figure include partially AI-generated tracks.
In January 2025, Deezer’s system identified 10% of uploaded tracks as fully AI-generated.
Since then, the proportion of AI tracks – made using written prompts such as “country, 1990s style, male singer” – has more than tripled, leading the platform’s chief executive, Alexis Lanternier, to say that AI music is “flooding music streaming”.
‘Siphoning money from royalty pool’
What’s more, when Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries – the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany and Japan – and asked them to detect whether three tracks were real or AI, 97% could not tell the difference.
That’s despite the fact that the motivation behind the surge of AI music is not in the least bit creative, according to Deezer. The company says that roughly 70% of fully AI-generated tracks are what it calls “fraudulent” – that is, designed purely to make money.
“The common denominator is the ambition to boost streams on specific tracks in order to siphon money from the royalty pool,” a Deezer spokesperson told Sky News.
“With AI-generated content, you can easily create massive amounts of tracks that can be used for this purpose.”
File pic: Reuters
The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, Deezer says, but the behaviour around them is. Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system – a bot – to listen to a song over and over again to make royalties from it.
Even though the total number of streams for each individual track is very low – Deezer estimates that together they account for 0.5% of all streams – the work needed to make an AI track is so tiny that the rewards justify the effort.
Are fully-AI tracks being removed?
Deezer is investing in AI-detection software and has filed two patents for systems that spot AI music. But it is not taking down the tracks it marks as fully-AI.
Instead it removes them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, a measure designed to stop the tracks getting streams and therefore generating royalties, and marks the tracks as “AI-generated content”.
“If people want to listen to an AI-generated track however, they can and we are not stopping them from doing so – we just want to make sure they are making a conscious decision,” the Deezer spokesperson says.
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Deezer’s survey found that more than half (52%) of respondents felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music.
“The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks or not,” said the company’s boss Alexis Lanternier.
“There’s also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists.”
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Musicians protests AI copyright plans
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush – released a silent album to protest plans by the UK government to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.
A recent study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggested that generative AI music could be worth £146bn a year in 2028 and account for around 60% of music libraries’ revenues.
By this metric, the authors concluded, 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028, a sum of £3.5bn.
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