COEN BROTHERS planning movie set in ANCIENT ROME. F**k yes.
…to be fair, anything involving the Coen Brothers has me ending my statement with “fuck yes.” But still, this is exciting to me. The Brothers Coen are planning an existential flick (do they tackle any other kind?) set in Ancient Rome.
Wut!
“You always hesitate to mention these things when you are in the middle of them, because sometimes they just go in a drawer and never surface again and then people ask ‘what ever happened to that thing’ for the next 20 years,” Joel Coen said earlier this fall at the Telluride Film Festival, before mentioning he and Ethan Coen were writing a movie about an opera singer. So while any news about what they’re working on next is pretty exciting, just bear in mind that plans change, creative inspiration could elsewhere and financing could be tough to come by.
That said, while the Coens haven’t been shy about dipping into various period settings (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “A Serious Man,” “The Hudsucker Proxy,” “True Grit,” “Inside Llewyn Davis”) it seems that they are eager to go even more further back than any of those films. The Associated Press recently caught up with writer/director siblings and revealed they are penning a movie set in “ancient Rome.” But of course, the playful brothers don’t offer up much beyond that.
“It’s like: Would you ever do a sandal movie?” Joel laughed about the genesis of the script.
“It’s big. We’re interested in the big questions. And we don’t (expletive) around with subtext. This one especially,” Ethan said. “It’s not like our piddly ‘A Serious Man.'” With Joel adding they “chickened-out” with that movie, it seems they are going for broke (existentially?) with this one.
“We hadn’t grown up,” Ethan adds. “In that respect, OK, we have matured. We’re ready to answer the big questions now.”