Knives Out director Rian Johnson has said that Apple won’t let the villains in movies use iPhones. “Apple… they let you use iPhones in movies but — and this is very crucial if you’re ever watching a mystery movie — bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera,” the director talked about in a video interview with Vanity Fair which you can watch below.
He said revealing this information could possibly spoil future mystery movies by showing who the good guys and bad guys are. “Every single filmmaker that has a bad guy in their movie that’s supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now,” he said jokingly. It’s an important detail in a movie like Knives Out, where, at one point or different, basically every character is treated as a suspect of murdering novelist Harlan Thrombey.
Its been talked about in the industry for a while about Apple’s control over how its products are shown in TV shows and movies. According to MacRumors, the company says that its products should only be used “in the best of light, in a manner or context that reflects well on the Apple products and on Apple Inc.” It’s especially hard when Apple is the one bankrolling a production. In 2019, The New York Times reported that Apple was concerned with how its devices were shown in content made for its own streaming service.
This control is not something new and it go back a long way. Check out this Wired article from way back in 2002, which said out that all the good guys in 24 use Macs and all the villains use Windows PCs. Check out the video below.
