A few details have emerged regarding the next collaboration between Ethan and Joel Coen, as the brothers look to reunite as a filmmaking duo to make a ‘pure’ horror..
Ethan Coen bought some welcome news into our lives last week, confirming that he and his brother Joel are “working on writing something” together again, which we hoped was a precursor to them reuniting once again as a directing duo.
The pair have been writing and directing as a partnership ever since their 1984 debut, Blood Simple. However, the last project that each filmmaker worked on was a solo outing: in 2021, Joel made The Tragedy Of Macbeth while Ethan has co-directed Drive Away Dolls, a ‘lesbian road movie’ due to release next month following a strike-related delay from last year.
As it stands, the duo’s last collaboration was 2018’s The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs for Netflix but happily, it looks like Ethan and Joel are planning to direct as a duo once more, with Ethan confirming (thanks to World of Reel for picking this up) at a writing masterclass in Norway that they have written a new script together and the plan is to shoot it soon.
Ethan revealed that ‘it’s a pure horror film, and it gets very bloody. If you like Blood Simple, I think you’ll enjoy it’.
Read more: How the Coen Brothers funded Blood Simple
Apparently, Joel is set to shoot something first (although we’re not quite sure what that project entails) but it’s very possible that the duo could get their horror project (which is said to be ‘horribly funny’) before cameras this year.
We know that Ethan is set to make a sequel to the soon-to-release Drive Away Dolls too, although we’re not yet sure where that fits into the brothers’ overall timeline. Either way, it’s great to see rumour firming into fact, and a new Coen brothers film is certainly something we can all look forward to, not least because Ethan has likened it to Blood Simple, the duo’s powerful debut film.
Will this new ‘pure’ horror project see them going back to their darker dramatic roots? We certainly hope so. We’ll bring you more on this project as we hear it.
