According to Ethan Coen, he and his sibling Joel are “working on writing something” for the first time in years, hinting at a Coen brothers reformation…
We like good news mornings, and this morning certainly qualifies as one of those.
Along with the news that Ryan Coogler and Michael B Jordan are renewing their creative partnership which runs back over a decade, we’re hearing that another established duo are reuniting to work together once again. According to comments made to Empire, Ethan Coen has confirmed that he and his brother Joel are “working on writing something” together again, which is hopefully a precursor to them reuniting once again as directors.
The duo 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. Given that we’ve recently seen it confirmed that the Safdie brothers have also dissolved their directing partnership, the American filmmaking scene was beginning to look particularly thin when it comes to talented brothers making wonderful films together.
Read more: The screenplays the Coen brothers wrote but didn’t direct
The Coens’ creative partnership has given us some the most memorable films of the last 40 years, from Fargo to No Country For Old Men to The Big Lebowski to Barton Fink.
There’s no news as yet to the nature of the project; the brothers have tried their hand at so many genres over the last 40 years, it’s difficult to even predict what type of story may on the way.
Their tales have often included undertones of the western genre though, whether it’s neo-westerns like Blood Simple or No Country For Old Men, straight-up western pics like their True Grit remake, or the post-modern irony of the aforementioned The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs. It’s a genre they’ve returned to time and time again so perhaps the narrative possibilities of America’s frontier (literal or otherwise) may have lured them in again?
When we hear more, you can rest assured we’ll let you know.
