FORKS OUT

Netflix Uses ‘Sesame Street’ to Shamelessly Promote Big Holiday Movie

The streamer nabbed the children’s program after the Trump administration cut PBS funding.

Netflix has no qualms about using its Sesame Street deal to promote the next star-studded installment of its Knives Out franchise.

The streamer released a long-winded promo for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery on Tuesday, which features Sesame’s most popular muppets in a kid-friendly mystery of their own—replete with a muppet-fied Benoit Blanc, voiced by the on-screen man himself, Daniel Craig, in the character’s signature southern drawl.

The new video, aptly titled “Forks Out: A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery,” renames Benoit to create Beignet Blanc, in the “unlikely crossover” Netflix’s Tudum says “fans have been crying out for.”

Detective Beignet is on the case when Cookie Monster’s triple-berry pie is mysteriously eaten by an unknown suspect. “I have arrived to this street of Sesame,” Beignet says as he arrives to help solve the pie mystery, “on a sunny day turned cloudy.”

In addition to Cookie Monster, the story also includes familiar faces Elmo, Grover, Oscar the Grouch, and Zoe.

Under Netflix’s agreement with Sesame Workshop from last spring, new episodes of Sesame Street will premiere on Netflix and PBS on the same day, ensuring the series remains accessible to more children amid Trump’s budget cuts. HBO Max ended its deal with the kids content company last December, as it reoriented to focus on family content.

Wake Up Dead Man will again star Craig alongside Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner, and more, and will hit Netflix on December 12.

Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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