For many of us, Joel and Ethan Coen represented a kind of indivisible reality. Together they gave us some of the best films of the 1990s and 2000s, from Blood Simple to Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and many others, up to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in 2018. By that point they chose to pursue separate paths in their careers, with results generally lower than the heights of their collaborations (even though Joel Coen proved to be the more inspired of the two: after his Macbeth we await the announced Jack of Spades). And since fans always long for a reunion of their favorites, we all wondered whether they would ever work together again. The Kuwait Times also asked him this, in an interview conducted at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, where both will receive the career achievement award.
The Return of the Coen Brothers
Joel Coen, when asked, replied: “We’re getting older. It’s better to do it soon.” With that confirmation in hand, we wonder what their next project might be, but the Coens have not spoken in detail: “We have several things in what we call our archive, things we wrote in the past and other ideas that we haven’t written. We don’t know yet.” What is certain is that there was no quarrel between them that led to the split, as he always says: “Nothing like that happened.” As for the genre, it won’t be fantasy: “Certainly there is a bizarre worldwide cultural trend that mainstream films nowadays are mostly fantasy, science fiction, horror, superhero movies, all kinds of fantasy. For us it’s a sad thing because we’ve never been drawn to that stuff.” But a couple of years ago Ethan spoke of a script ready for their collaboration and that it would have been a “pure horror.” Yet perhaps the two have changed their minds. Joel also ruled out the possibility of a TV series for them, because “it’s not the way our minds think about stories.” The important thing, though, as they have stated, is that this reunion happens as soon as possible.
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