By Just last night I was saying to my significant other that it seemed like the Coen brothers had moved into a new phase of their career. We had just concluded watching Hail, Caesar! and a few weeks prior I had rewatched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and from such a small sampling pool I wondered if the Coens were moving into their vignette period. Oh how wrong I was, sort of.
In a rare solo venture, Joel Coen is going to write and direct an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and today we learned that the film will be led by the always amazing Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington. The adaptation looks to be a straight-ahead one with Washington playing a Scottish lord who upon hearing from three witches that he is to become king, works with his wife to raise their position.
While I’m a little sad that this is looking to be a straight adaptation in lieu of a modern take, I know deep in my heart that Joel Coen will do something great with such a classic tale. A24 seems to think that as well as they have already secured distributing rights for the movie.
As of now, the plan is to get everything done by the end of the year, so a release sometime in 2020 is possible. I do wonder what Ethan will do with his time now that Joel is doing this project on his own.
Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand to Star in Joel Coen’s ‘Macbeth’ [Variety]
