New Ethan Coen movie ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ gets fall release date

Christopher Rosen
Updated ·4 min read
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Ethan Coen’s first narrative movie as a solo director will arrive in theaters this year. On Monday, Focus Features announced Coen’s road-trip comedy “Drive-Away Dolls” will debut on September 22, putting it on track to potentially debut at one of the late summer’s big film festivals in Venice, Telluride, Colorado, or Toronto. 

Coen co-wrote and produced the film with Tricia Cooke, his wife. The pair previously collaborated together on the 2022 documentary “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind.” According to Deadline, “Drive-Away Dolls” “follows Jamie, an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend, and her demure friend Marian who desperately needs to loosen up. In search of a fresh start, the two embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way.” The cast includes Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as the leads as well as Beanie Feldstein, Pedro Pascal, Colman Domingo, Bill Camp, and Matt Damon.

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Coen, of course, spent decades making films with his brother, Joel Coen. The pair won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for “No Country for Old Men.” But after their 2018 film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” the brothers went their separate ways creatively. Joel Coen directed 2021’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” which starred Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. 

Speaking on a podcast in 2021, the Coen brothers’ longtime collaborator, composer Carter Burwell, said Ethan Coen just got a little tired of the business. “Ethan just didn’t want to make movies anymore. Ethan seems very happy doing what he’s doing, and I’m not sure what Joel will do after this,” Burwell said in an interview before the release of “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” “They also have a ton of scripts they’ve written together that are sitting on various shelves. I hope maybe they get back to those. I’ve read some of those, and they are great. We are all at an age where we just don’t know… we could all retire. It’s a wonderfully unpredictable business.”

Last year, however, Ethan Coen said there was “nothing dramatic” about his decision to step away from making movies alongside his brother. “You start out when you’re a kid and you want to make a movie. Everything’s enthusiasm and gung-ho, let’s go make a movie. And the first movie is just loads of fun. And then the second movie is loads of fun, almost as much fun as the first. And after 30 years, not that it’s no fun, but it’s more of a job than it had been,” Ethan Coen said to the Associated Press. “Joel kind of felt the same way but not to the extent that I did. It’s an inevitable by-product of aging. And the last two movies we made, me and Joel together, were really difficult in terms of production. I mean, really difficult. So if you don’t have to do it, you go at a certain point: Why am I doing this?”

After Cooke suggested the brothers had made “too many Westerns,” Ethan Coen added, “It was just getting a little old and difficult.”

Asked by the Associated Press if he imagined directing again with Joel Coen, Ethan Coen said nothing was set in stone. “Going our own separate ways sounds like it suggests it might be final. But none of this stuff happened definitively. None of the decisions are definitive. We might make another movie,” he said. “I don’t know what my next movie is going to be after this. The pandemic happened. I turned into a big baby and got bored and quit, and then the pandemic happened. Then other stuff happens and who knows?”

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