While filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen are currently in post-production on their Hollywood-set comedy Hail, Caesar!, it appears they’re already eyeing their next project. Per Deadline, the Coen Brothers have been set to write and potentially direct an adaptation of the Ross MacDonald crime novel Black Money for Warner Bros. The story revolves around private detective Lew Archer, who is enlisted to look into the suspiciously suave Frenchman who ran off with his client’s girlfriend. When he gets deeper into the case, however, the foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debt. Joel Silver is onboard to produce the adaptation of the novel, which was first released in 1966.
While the Coen Brothers are certainly two of the best original talents in the business, they’re no stranger to adaptation. They of course wrote and directed the brilliant No Country for Old Men all the way to numerous Oscar wins, and followed that up with the Western remake True Grit in 2010.
It’s unclear if this will indeed be the Coen Brothers’ next film, as the report notes that they’re only signed at this point to write the screenplay with the potential to direct. The duo has been doing some significant scriptwork outside of their own films as of late, writing the adaptation for Angelina Jolie’s WWII drama Unbroken and also working on the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies. However, there’s no denying the fact that the plot of Black Money feels like something the Coen Brothers could knock out of the park, should they choose to direct.
For now, though, we’ve still got Hail, Caesar! to look forward to. That ensemble includes George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Josh Brolin, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum, and the film is slated for release on February 5, 2016.