Ethan Coen says he and Joel just need to get their schedules synced

Ethan Coen says he and brother Joel have at least two written scripts they could make together, but it's hard to get their calendars lined up.

By William Hughes | May 17, 2025 | 2:11pm

Ethan and Joel Coen in 2018, Photo: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Film News The Coen Brothers

Ethan Coen says he and Joel just need to get their schedules synced

It’s now been seven years since the release of The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, currently the final collaboration between sibling writer-director team Joel and Ethan Coen. The two have kept busy in that time, with Joel Coen directing his wife Frances McDormand (alongside Denzel Washington) in The Tragedy Of Macbeth, and Ethan teaming up with his own spouse, Tricia Cooke, for what have now been two films and counting: Last year’s Drive-Away Dolls, and the upcoming Honey Don’t! Ethan Coen has made a few noises about teaming back up with his brother in that time, but now we’ve got (slightly) more concrete information, as he revealed in a recent interview that the current gap is much more about scheduling than any deeper rift.

It was actually Cooke who brought it up, as part of a Hollywood Reporter interview building hype for Honey, which is set to hit theaters on August 22. She mentioned that, while she and her husband do have a third movie in that “lesbian B-movie trilogy” they’ve been building together—it’s apparently called Go, Beavers!, because this family is just nuts for cinematic punctuation—the movie probably won’t come next, because they’re both going to be busy. “Ethan’s written a new movie with Joel and I’m writing something with my daughter right now.”

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Coen confirmed this information, although he made the potential project sound a little more distant: “We’ve written something. My god, it’s at least a year ago now we wrote something to do together. And we have an old thing that we’ve written. And maybe we’ll write something new.” But, again, it’s those dang schedules! “Joel is about to start something, so we kind of got out of sync. But yeah, the answer is yes. We just have to sort of get in sync again, when that happens.” (World Of Reel had previously reported back in January that Joel was preparing for another solo project which would likely delay any new Coen brothers movie; Ethan appears to be confirming that, although details about the new project are completely nil.)