“Wake Up Dead Man,” the third film in the “Knives Out” series from director Rian Johnson, came out in theaters briefly in October and is now available for streaming.
As a (now retired) member of the Directors
Guild of America, I have access to screeners of various films for DGA Award consideration. This film was one of them, so I watched it last week.
I noticed in a couple of scenes that one of the characters, the grounds keeper of the church where the action is centered, is a baseball fan who had a game on a TV in a few brief scenes. The baseball action shown was from a Cubs game.
Today, Major League Baseball noted this on social media:
Someone on Reddit already sleuthed some of this mystery, but the Reddit poster left something out and I’m here to tell you more.
First, that is obviously Kyle Tucker in the screenshot shown on the MLB social media post. That means the baseball action shown has to be from 2025. Thing is, filming of “Wake Up Dead Man” wrapped in September 2024, which means the baseball action was added in post-production.
Second, if you look carefully at the baseball screenshot, there’s no scorebug. That means that Marquee Sports Network provided a clean (no graphics) feed to the movie producers. That makes the date more difficult to determine. With a scorebug I could have figured it out right away, but the film producers probably wanted the game to be more generic. They did not take into account sleuths like me and the Reddit poster!
There were a couple of other scenes shown from Wrigley Field on the TV in the film, including one where we see a Diamondbacks pitcher. I don’t have access to screenshots from the film other than what you see in the MLB social media post, but I can tell you that narrows this down to three possible games, the D-backs series at Wrigley Field this past April 18-20.
Here’s what the Reddit poster said about the Cubs game featured in the film:
Normally I don’t expect a movie to bother matching up a random game in the background with the day the film takes place, but it actually does! A large portion of the film (including the moment we see the Cubs game) happens on Good Friday (4/18/25) which was the day of the crazy D-Backs game where the Cubs led in an early blowout, blew the lead, then took it back with some dramatic homers.
While what is noted above about the film this is true — the movie action does take place on Good Friday — I am not so sure that all the game video featured in the film is from that game. Look at the fans in the seats behind home plate in the social media post. They all have jackets on. The game time temperature on April 18, per the boxscore, was 74 degrees. The next two days were much cooler (49 and 50 degrees, respectively).
One commenter in that Reddit thread claims that an Ian Happ single in the April 18 game was “prominently featured.” Here’s that single [VIDEO].
I believe this is correct. Again, though, look at the fans seated behind the plate in that clip. That doesn’t match the fans shown in the Tucker screenshot. They’re dressed for warmer weather and they are NOT the same fans shown in the MLB social media post. As noted by the Reddit poster, the Cubs won that wild game 13-11 after leading 7-1 going into the eighth, giving up a 10-run inning, then coming back with six of their own in the bottom of the eighth.
Here’s a screenshot from Tucker’s first at-bat in the game Sunday, April 20:
As you can see, two fans in the background of that shot match what we see in the Tucker screenshot shown on MLB’s social media post (the man in the blue and black jacket and the woman wearing a cap and a jacket with a hood). Thus that particular scene had to be from the April 20 game, though I could not tell you specifically which one of Tucker’s at-bats it’s from. The Cubs lost that game 3-2 in 11 innings.
So I think the answer is that the filmmakers took action from two of these games and used that in the film, probably just the Friday and Sunday games, since the D-backs players shown are all wearing their rust-colored jerseys, and for the Saturday game they wore black jerseys. Further, the baseball action is only incidental to the plot of the film, which games were used really didn’t matter much. Lastly, since it was overcast both of those days at Wrigley Field, game action could be used from either one.
As far as the film is concerned, I liked it. It’s got the usual great ensemble cast and Daniel Craig is excellent as the detective Benoit Blanc. In my opinion it’s not quite as good as the first “Knives Out” film but it’s better than “Glass Onion,” the second one. “Wake Up Dead Man” is worth your time and it’s now streaming on Netflix.
And whether or not Kyle Tucker returns to the Cubs (and I suspect he won’t), he’s immortalized on film as a Cub forever in “Wake Up Dead Man.”
