Ethan Coen is taking a road trip without his brother for his next film. He'll instead be joining forces with Focus Features and Working Title to direct a currently untitled road trip film that's been years in the making. Plot details and other specifics are currently being kept under wraps, but Coen will be joined by his wife Tricia Cooke who co-wrote the script and is producing the film alongside him. Filming is expected to begin this Summer.
Despite the lack of information, The Hollywood Reporter notes that it seems to be based on a script Coen and Cooke wrote in the mid-2000s. The premise was a lesbian road trip action sex comedy that brings the two main characters into contact with a number of strange occurrences on a trip from Philadelphia to Miami. In the script, a party girl and her introverted, stuffed shirt friend make the most of their ride to Florida, visiting bars along the way, running into a bitter ex-girlfriend, and discovering a severed head in a hatbox à la Se7en. To top it all off, the script also contained a mystery surrounding a briefcase and an evil senator, and it was meant to be directed by Gas Food Lodging director Allison Anders. It's unclear just how the film has changed since then, but it sounds completely wild.
For the project, Coen will reunite with one of him and his brother Joel Coen's typical producers Robert Graf. Graf has been along for the ride for many of the Coen brothers' biggest successes and even joined Joel's first solo project The Tragedy of Macbeth. Also on board as producers are Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner for Working Title.
With the solo outing, Ethan is following in his brother Joel's footsteps. The other half of the famous sibling filmmakers went alone to helm the Oscar-nominated The Tragedy of Macbeth for Apple TV+, marking the first time either one of the pair had written and directed a separate project. Together, the Coen brothers' brand has been a seal of quality for films over the years, with the two creating such masterpieces as The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. That latter film racked up three Academy Awards on its own, including Best Picture at the 2008 show. Their most recent film together was the 2018 western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs for Netflix.
This untitled project marks a bit of a return for Ethan, who seemed content to spend some time away from the big screen for a time. Carter Burwell, the main composer for the Coen brothers' work, spoke to the podcast Score last year about the duo's split in filmmaking, saying that Ethan's interest in making movies had waned considerably. In a previous interview with Collider, Burwell stated Coen's interests were elsewhere outside of filmmaking. It seems Coen still has ideas he wants to bring to life on the big screen.