PHILADELPHIA – Rian Johnson might strike you as a rock guy. “Knives Out,” his first Benoit Blanc whodunit, shared its title with a Radiohead song. The 51-year-old filmmaker then named its two sequels after Beatles and U2 cuts. But when he’s face-deep in a script, he tends to turn on … show tunes?

Oh yes. He played the “Follies” cast album on repeat while writing 2019’s “Knives Out.” Next, the soundtrack for penning the 2022 follow-up, “Glass Onion,” was “Merrily We Roll Along” – another Stephen Sondheim standby. And which musical helped Johnson bring the latest Blanc mystery, “Wake Up Dead Man,” to life? This time around, it wasn’t just one.

“I have a four-hour-long show tunes playlist that I kind of put together with an absurd amount of thought and care, grouped by theme and tone,” John

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