The Coen brothers could be heading back to their hometown in Minneapolis for a reunion movie eight years after their last joint film, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” While at Lyon’s Lumière Film Festival, where they received a career tribute, Joel and Ethan Coen revealed they have several projects in the pipeline set in Minneapolis, where they previously shot “Fargo” in 1996 and “A Serious Man” in 2009. But we’ve discussed going back because there are certain crew people we missed,” said Ethan, sitting alongside Joel, Lumiere festival chief Thierry Fremaux (who also heads Cannes), and film journalist Didier Allouche. So we’ll see if they haven’t sort of germinated to the point where we would go, you know, that’s what we’re going to do next, or we’re even going to definitely do,” said Joel Coen.
Joel was responding to a challenge from Oscar-winning actor Frances McDormand, his wife of 42 years, who had playfully urged them on stage at the Lumiere ceremony to complete the unofficial trilogy that began with “Fargo” and “A Serious Man.” “I think Fran wants to see it. We’ll see if we can accommodate her,” Joel joked. Since Netflix’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” Joel went on to direct “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” starring McDormand and Denzel Washington, while Ethan made “Drive-Away Dolls” and “Honey Don’t!,” both co-written with his wife and longtime collaborator Tricia Cooke.
But the brothers said they have continued writing together and have several unproduced scripts. Joel then joked that “one of which we could not find on the computer.” “One of the Minneapolis stories we were talking about had a main part intended for an actor who has since died. So we’re thinking, well, we’re not sure that’s going to work.
That’s a consequence of aging,” Ethan said. They also wrote a new script together while each was working on a separate film, but it now feels outdated to them. It feels more like a period movie now.
Should we make it or shouldn’t we?” he said. But the idea of literalizing it in terms of Trump specifically is probably not in our wheelhouse, in terms of how we think about a story,” Joel said. Audiences are entitled to take our movies any way they want.
Making those comparisons may be totally appropriate for an audience, but we literally don’t think about it that way,” Ethan said. The Coens also weighed in on the changing film business, including the role of streaming platforms, which have backed some of their recent projects. Netflix produced and released “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” while Joel’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” was released theatrically by A24 before streaming on Apple TV+.
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