The Coen Brothers are set to reunite to make a “very gory” horror movie.
The famous director brothers last worked together on the 2018 Western anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Since then, Joel Coen has made an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth starring Denzel Washington, while Ethan Coen will soon release Drive-Away Dolls, a road trip comedy he co-wrote with his wife Tricia Cooke and starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan and Beanie Feldstein.
At a Q&A event for Runaway Girls last Friday in Tromso, Norway, Ethan Coen revealed that he and Joel have written a new script and plan to reunite to collaborate on directing the film.
“It’s a pure horror movie and it’s going to be very bloody,” Coen said, hinting that the film is in some ways reminiscent of the brothers’ first film, 1984’s Blood Simple, a violent neo-noir.
“If you liked Bloodless, I think you’ll like this,” Coen teased, while Cooke added that the script was “extremely funny.”
It was recently confirmed that Coen and Cooke will follow up “Runaway Girls” with another dark comedy, “Honey Don’t!”. The project will reunite them with star Margaret Qualley, as well as Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans. The movie will allegedly be set in Bakersfield, California, with Evans playing the role of a cult leader.
Coen and Cooke previously worked together on the 2022 music documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind. At the time, Ethan Coen explained the brothers’ decision to focus on separate projects with the following words:
When you are a child, you set out on a journey and you want to make a movie. With enthusiasm and eagerness, you say, “Let’s make a movie.” And the first movie is really fun.
And then the second movie is a lot of fun, almost as much as the first one. And after 30 years, even though it’s still fun, it’s more work than before. Joel felt the same way, but not as much as I did.
It’s an inevitable byproduct of aging. The last two movies that Joel and I did together were really difficult in terms of production. I mean it was really, really hard. So if you don’t have to do it, at a certain point you ask yourself: ‘Why am I doing this?’
The Independent included Runaway Girls in its list of the 24 most anticipated films of 2024, writing
The Coen Brothers’ Ethan Half directed and wrote the screenplay for the lesbian-themed crime thriller in which Margaret Qualley and Blockers star Geraldine Viswanathan take over a mysterious briefcase and battle crooks and criminals played by Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon and Colman Domingo. To be honest, some movies can market themselves.
Runaway Girls will be released in the US on February 23rd.
