The Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, seemingly “breaking up” was one of the biggest film stories of the year when it was first reported. After eighteen feature films that they wrote, directed, produced, and edited together, the pair decided to pursue different opportunities; for Joel that became 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth and for Ethan it was 2022’s Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind and the upcoming Drive-Away Dolls. It was previously unclear if The Coen Brother would ever be reuniting but the national nightmare appears to almost be over for film fans worried that their partnership really was finished.
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In Empire‘s latest issue, Ethan Coen and his wife/creative partner Tricia Cooke spoke about their new movie Drive-Away Dolls, which they co-wrote and which Coen directed. The pair opened up about how they have plans to follow-up the movie with another film, described as ” a more serious lesbian detective story,” with Ethan Coen confirming that he and his brother Joel are “working on writing something” once again. Though he offered no further details about what that might be, the brief hiatus of the Coen Brothers being over feels like cause for celebration.
Joel and Ethan Coen previously collaborated on movies including Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Though their projects have often earned Academy Award nominations, their only wins are for Best Original Screenplay for Fargo, and Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Direction, and Best Picture for No Country for Old Men.
Speaking in a previous interview with The AP, Ethan Coen opened up about the split between he and his brother, saying: “You start out when you’re a kid and you want to make a movie. Everything’s enthusiasm and gung-ho, let’s go make a movie. And the first movie is just loads of fun. And then the second movie is loads of fun, almost as much as the first. And after 30 years, not that it’s no fun, but it’s more of a job than it had been…It was the experience of making a movie. More of a grind and less fun.”
It’s worth noting that just because The Coen Brothers are writing a new project together doesn’t necessarily mean that it will come to fruition. The pair have been around in Hollywood long enough that there’s even a Wikipedia page for their unrealized projects. Among the movies they’ve written that haven’t seen the light of day are an adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a sword-and-sandal epic set in Ancient Rome, and even a remake of Scarface.
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