Edward Norton's Tech Billionaire From Glass Onion Is An Amalgam Of The World's Worst One-Percenters
Edward Norton fans will be getting an early Christmas present this year with the release of his latest movie, Netflix's "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," on December 23. For those who may not know, "Glass Onion" serves as a direct sequel to Rian Johnson's 2019 hit film "Knives Out," but this time the director is going through Netflix after landing a $469 million deal with the popular streamer, thus setting him up to make "Glass Onion" and one more film in this franchise (via The Hollywood Reporter). While fans are excited to see Norton enter the world of "Knives Out," they should not expect to love his character, Miles Bron, which was the intention according to Norton.
"We decided very early on that we were trying to create kind of the Ubermensch of tech Illuminati narcissists," Norton explained on "The View" Tuesday, December 13. While his character, a billionaire tech-mogul hosting a murder-mystery party, is unlikeable, Norton still saw this role as a gift, as well as the time spent with his co-stars. "It was one of the best ensembles I've been in," Norton said before diving into his role specifically.
'We took the best worst qualities from literally dozens of people'
According to Edward Norton, when it came time for him and Rian Johnson to create a persona for Miles Bron, the two of them decided to toss "dozens" of real-life mogul figures into the creative pot, who were then combined to form a mega-mogul.
"We took the best worst qualities from literally dozens of people," Norton said. "If you look closely, there's kind of Easter eggs pointing at this guy and that woman," he said. "It's much more fun to create than to just satirize one person."
Norton has been very vocal about the inspiration behind Bron, pulling from a never ending list of billionaires. "The list of people it could be grows longer every day, and even some of the ones we might not have thought were candidates have proven themselves to be," Norton told /Film in early November. "I said to Rian that I think it's sort of like Carly Simon's song 'You're So Vain (You'll Probably Think This Song is About You).' I think that there's a lot of tech Illuminati who probably will and should think that it's in reference to them."
Johnson has also talked about Bron being inspired by tech moguls today. He told NPR in an interview that he found it boring to just focus on one person when he could attack the billionaire ideology and way of living as a whole. "I guess what was more interesting to me is the idea of these people and their place in society and our relationship to them," Johnson said. "I think we do have this uniquely American thing — I can speak for myself; I have it — built into us of just instinctually mistaking wealth for competence or wisdom."